January started with so much promise for the Edmonton Oilers, with three consecutive wins including an extremely dominating shutout victory in Boston again the Bruins. On an overall run of 15-3-1 in their last 19 games, this only reinforced hope among the fan base that 2025 was finally going to be the year the Stanley Cup returned 'home' for the first time since 1990.
So of course the Oilers did the most Oilers thing you can think of, by following up their impressive 4-0 win in Boston with a disastrous 5-3 loss in Pittsburgh against the Penguins. From arguably their best defensive performance of the season, to allowing four goals inside the first 14 minutes of Thursday night's game, and given themselves no chance of winning.
As a result, this provided a harsh reminder that the Oilers cannot rest on their laurels and take anything for granted. This is still a streaky and inconsistent roster, which one minute looks like the greatest team in league history, to seeming like it shouldn't even be allowed to play at the NHL level. (Okay, perhaps slight hyperbole, but you get the point.)
Don't put this one on the goalie
We can appreciate that for a lot of people, it would be so easy to point the finger of blame in the direction of Stuart Skinner specifically for the Penguins game. In some respects he is perceived as the poster boy for the Oilers' inconsistent play, and certainly he has displayed some erratic form during this season and last. (In fairness though, he does usually rise to the challenge when the stakes are are highest.)
However, despite the optics looking bad after allowing five goals on 26 shots, the reality is that you can only really blame Skinner for the Penguins' fourth one. He received no luck whatsoever on the night, highlighted by a funky bounce on the fifth goal by the home team.
No, this terrible defensive performance rests on the shoulders of those playing in front of the Edmonton native. Darnell Nurse and Brett Kulak in particular looked poor, but lets be clear in stressing that this was a collective disaster.
Oilers D-man doesn't pull any punches
Kulak didn't attempt to make any excuses, which is commendable. Speaking to the media postgame, including Sportsnet's Mark Spector, he said:
"They had a better start than us. They were faster, they were putting pucks in and forechecking hard and coming hard to the net. It was as simple as that."
This is certainly a team who do hold themselves accountable by assessing the situation, as opposed to trying to place blame elsewhere, which is a sign of Kris Knoblauch's calm and cerebral personality influencing the players positively. In this respect, as per Jamie Umbach of NHL.com, Kulak said:
"It was not the first period we wanted, obviously, and we expect a lot better out of ourselves to start games for sure. We pride ourselves on that, but we just came back in and regrouped, we addressed it, and we knew we didn't like it."
Teammate Mattias Ekholm seemed at a loss to wrap his head around why the Oilers played as they did on the night, with his comments alluding to our aforementioned point about the streaky form which can plague them. As per Spector, he said:
"I’ve been in this league long enough to know that a ton of things don’t make sense in this league. We had a good effort in Boston,a good effort in Seattle (to open the road trip), and followed that up with (a) not-so-good effort tonight."
Two legends collide
Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby were understandably the headline acts on the night as two of the best centres of all time, and they both had their moments with three points each. For Crosby specifically this included a goal which made the score 5-1 to the Penguins, with the added significance that he became the ninth-leading scorer in NHL history on the power play.
For the teams as a whole though, the Oilers entered the night on a seven-game winning streak versus the Penguins. In fact it was a dominating run of results, in so much as Edmonton had outscored Pittsburgh 37-9 during the sequence.
Of course none of this ended up mattering on Thursday night, although that doesn't mean the recent previous matchups didn't motivate the Pengins. As Kulak said:
"Everyone is always aware of stats like that. When a team has your number for a while, you always have a little extra bite in your game. It was probably a bit of that that led to their good start."
Compounding how much the Oilers let themselves down on the night, they also missed a golden opportunity to get closer to the Vegas Golden Knights in the standings. The Golden Knights were blanked 4-0 at home to the New York Islanders, but remain six points ahead of the Oilers in the Pacific Division standings.
To be clear in all of this, we do not appreciate that the 5-3 loss is just one game and that the Oilers in general are still tearing through the majority of the NHL these days. However, the important thing is that they take what happened in Pittsburgh as a warning and something to learn from moving forward.