EDMONTON — The Edmonton Oilers are sick. And now, Connor McDavid is, to some degree, injured.
Trailing Vegas by nine points in the Pacific Division — and it’s not even November yet — the Edmonton Oilers are five games into the season and still searching for their first third period goal.
They scored 100 of those last season, fifth best in the NHL. Today, after a 1-3-1 start punctuated by a 3-2 overtime loss on home ice Saturday, they’d kill to be ranked fifth at anything — from goals scored, to power play, to penalty kill, to goals allowed.
“We are just too up and down. Not consistent enough right now,” lamented Leon Draisaitl. “It feels like every mistake we make ends up in the back of our net. We have lots of things to fix.”
The mistake Draisaitl made in OT most certainly ended up in the back of his team’s net, as the veteran centre let his man (Mark Scheifele) get away, and the Jets sniper tapped in the game-winner with Drasiaitl in his wake.
“There was a little mistake there by me,” he admitted after the game.
The parts of this Oilers lineup are good. We know that by assessing the lineup, evaluating the separate players by their comparables across the league and looking at their performance history.
But somehow, inexplicably, their sum total this season has been alarmingly insufficient.
A power play that set the all-time record a year ago could not provide enough on Saturday to separate from the Jets, scoring once in four chances but too often operating like a Porsche fitted with tires meant for a Silverado half ton.
On this night the goaltending was good, the work ethic excellent. But other things failed.
Like Stuart Skinner’s indecisive journey to a loose puck that handed Winnipeg the game-tying goal, a short-handed gift late in the period.
On a rare night this season where the goalie made all the saves he was supposed to, and a few he isn’t, a new crack was found as Nurse and Skinner played “you’ve got it I have it” with a puck that would be fished out of the back of the Oilers’ goal seconds later.
“We both stutter stepped at the exact same time,” Skinner said. “So I kind of had to make two choices and I made the wrong one. Now I know what to do next time.”
The next time…
Lessons…
Wasn’t this supposed to be the year when the lessons had been learned? When does this career student get the degree?
In the end, this overtime loss was unlike any of the wanting performances we have seen so far this season, in that Edmonton did so many things right. Yet, they invented enough things to do wrong — including an injury to McDavid that held him out of the important minutes late in the third period and overtime — that they lost.
Again.
“It appeared to be muscular more than anything as I watched the play,” said Jay Woodcroft, who like all coaches do, claimed to have little knowledge of his franchise player’s injury. “I thought it was more him coming up the ice and just something felt off for him. That’s what it looked like from the bench but I’ve got to re-watch the tape.”
Here’s a look at the video, with McDavid grabbing his hip area after getting tangled up with Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey at 12:33 of the first period. He would go on to play 20:48 in the game, but the fact he couldn’t go in overtime left a murmur buzzing through the Rogers Place crowd.
On a team that finds a new wound to lick every time out, Nurse was asked what he felt was wrong this time?
“Our killer Instinct,” he declared. “We had a good start to the game — it’s a 2-1 game for a good chunk of it. (You need) killer instinct. Try to find the next one.
“We can sit here and dwell, and dwell, and dwell,” he said. “We need to put ourselves in positions where we have leads, and we need to trust on that killer instinct.”
Another night, another set of questions. Another loss.
It’s certainly not too late to put things together here, as American Thanksgiving looms on the calendar.
But somehow, it’s getting late rather early here in the city that is supposed to deliver Canada its first Stanley Cup in 30 years.
And now McDavid is hurt…
