It isn’t the first time the Edmonton Oilers have found themselves in this position. And therein lies the problem.
Two-and-a-half weeks ago, Connor McDavid’s club took the ice against the Colorado Avalanche under the Rogers Place lights, found themselves down 5-0 midway through the tilt, and finished the evening on the wrong end of a brutal 9-1 loss.
“I definitely hope this is rock bottom for us,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said that night. “I hope this wakes up a lot of guys, and we understand we’ve got a lot of growing to do to become a good hockey team.”
Nine games later, the Oil are back there again, Knoblauch’s group enduring an 8-3 shellacking at the hands of the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night that saw all the same ghosts haunting Edmonton’s efforts.
If it’s possible after a game lost by five goals, the final score might even flatter the Oilers. In truth, the night was over after 20 minutes, Dallas pouring in four tallies in the first period, adding two more in each of the next two frames, and allowing the Oilers a few goals of their own only when it was clear the tilt was already all but won. Not to mention the Stars actually potted a ninth goal on the night, but saw it waved off because of a high stick.
Perhaps most worrying for the Oilers faithful, though, is the fact that they’ve seen this game before. The same issues that stymied Edmonton’s efforts against Colorado seemed to seep into their game again Tuesday night, undoing the good will built up over a two-week, seven-game road trip that had the Oilers seemingly moving in the right direction.
Instead, in this one, it was the same defensive-zone giveaways, the same lack of fight, the same worrying goaltending issues.
Stuart Skinner gave up four goals on Dallas’s first eight shots before he was pulled at the first intermission. His counterpart didn’t fare much better, Calvin Pickard taking over and allowing four goals himself, on 22 shots, through the rest of the tilt.
It’s a situation Oilers fans are all too familiar with, one that seems to be scrutinized by the hockey world at large season after season. Still, while a game-stealing performance from either goaltender would’ve been appreciated on a night like this one, in their captain’s eyes, the loss isn’t on their shoulders.
“I really feel like goaltending is a team thing,” McDavid told the media after the game Tuesday. “It’s tough for goalies to look good when the group in front of them is not playing well. I don’t really care who it is — when the team in front of them is not playing up to their standards, it’s tough for a goalie to look good. I felt bad for both of them tonight.”
Fellow locker-room leader Leon Draisaitl echoed the sentiment.
“I mean, what are they supposed to do?” the German pivot asked post-game. “They’re part of the team too, and I’m sure they would tell you themselves that they can be better at times. … But there’s not much they can do. We’re giving up grade-A look after grade-A look.
“You can’t expect a goalie to stop every single one of them and win the game 3-1. It doesn’t work like that. We just have to be so much better for them.”
That said, there’s no denying the Oilers find themselves in a difficult spot when it comes to their confidence in the tandem manning the cage for them. With a quarter of the season in the books, Pickard’s .847 save percentage ranks fourth-lowest among any netminder who’s played an NHL game this season. Skinner’s .878 ranks 15th-lowest league-wide, and sixth-lowest among regular starters.
Disconnected defensive play continues to sink Oilers
As was made clear by Nos. 97 and 29, Skinner and Pickard got little help from the group in front of them in this one. Go back through the film on each of Dallas’s goals, and you’ll see familiar trends emerge — lost battles, ill-timed giveaways and a defensive group that looks disconnected overall.
It started with Dallas’s first of the night, when Wyatt Johnston swooped behind the Oilers’ cage, stole the puck from Evan Bouchard, and wrapped around the net to set up Jamie Benn for goal No. 1. The Stars’ second came from Roope Hintz, who picked up a rebound in the slot with no one around him, and fired it home. Goal No. 3 saw Brett Kulak lose a battle along the wall in the neutral zone, sending Dallas flying towards Skinner on a 2-on-1. The Stars’ fourth saw veteran Mattias Ekholm throw the puck up the wall, straight to the opposition, spurring a sequence that saw Dallas walk back in and put another one on the board — again by outworking Edmonton’s defenders in and around the netfront.
That was just the first period.
You can forgive a 5-on-3 goal from Jason Robertson — who extended his goal streak to seven games and 11 snipes — and the best power-play unit in the league. But before the night was through, the Stars had tallied three more goals by outworking Edmonton in front of the Oilers’ cage.
“I think it stems from the whole thing,” McDavid said post-game when asked about the club’s continued defensive struggles. “We’re not good enough with the puck, and it’s leading to sustained time in our D-zone. It’s the whole thing. We’re not getting up the ice, we’re not forechecking pucks back, and we’re playing too much in the D-zone.
“There’s not many D-zone systems that hold up after 30, 40 (seconds), a minute in your D-zone. It’s tough to defend.”
More than the details, it’s an overall lack of cohesion that’s sinking them, in Draisaitl’s view.
“We’re clearly not on the same page, as a group,” the centreman assessed Tuesday. “And then all of a sudden a lot of things get exposed that, when you are on the same page, don’t get exposed. We’re just not in sync as a group, and we have to figure that part out.
“We’re nearly 30 games in and still don’t seem to have it down, or know what we are. I don’t really know what to say. It was just not good enough.”
Wrecking ball Clattenburg the only bright spot for home side
Perhaps the only positive on the night was the play of 20-year-old Connor Clattenburg.
The Ottawa product drew into the lineup for his second-ever NHL game, with the Oil still without the injured Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Kasperi Kapanen. And the six-foot-two, 215-pound wrecking ball made his presence known all night long, throwing his body around and showing some much-needed jump amid a largely lifeless performance from his Oilers
Clattenburg’s finest moment came early in the second, as Edmonton looked to claw its way back from the first period’s 4-0 flattening. With the crowd silent, save for a few sarcastic cheers for Pickard as he made his first couple saves of the night, Clattenburg went barrelling into a Stars defender behind Jake Oettinger’s net. The puck was thrown to the corner, so he continued to battle there, too.
Before his shift was through, the puck found its way to Ty Emberson at the point — the Oilers defender filtered it to the net, as Clattenburg jostled for position in front. As the rebound spilled to the edge of the crease, Clattenburg stood his ground, found it in the chaos, and shovelled it into the net.
The 2024 fifth-round pick finished the night with his first NHL goal and seven hits to his name — more than double anyone else on the team — showing the kind of fight his club seems to sorely need more of at the moment.
