EDMONTON — It’s the great quandary, and a question the Edmonton Oilers simply can not solve.
They go into Dallas, play one of the NHL’s top teams on their terms, out-battling the Stars in a game of big boy hockey that wasn’t settled until the final 10 minutes. Edmonton out-Dallased Dallas, and won 6-3.
Two days later you come home to a Vancouver Canucks team that played at home the night before, and grab a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes. A couple hours later the Canucks are jumping on their plane with a 5-2 win, and the Oilers are left with a blank stare and an empty cup, losers of three straight at home.
“It’s unacceptable,” said a visibly upset Zach Hyman. “We had a really good start and were up 2-0 and were the fresher team and then they scored five unanswered. You can’t win like that.”
The Dallas game was supposed to be a template.
Turns out, it was a one-off.
Talk, Hyman points out, is cheap.
“We talked about how this is the way you need to play. It is different when you have to go out there and execute it,” he said. “You can say all the right things, tell you (media) guys all the right things. That we are going to do this, we are going to do that. At the end of the day, you have the eye test.
“You can watch and see what happens and clearly we weren’t good enough. We … were up 2-0 and then five unanswered. It can’t happen.”
It did happen, as Edmonton enters their Christmas break having lost four of their past six at home, where they are 9-9-1.
Lose to one of the Canucks or Ducks? It happens.
Lose to both, in your own rink?
“Obviously, we haven’t been good enough at home,” said Connor McDavid. “We have to find a way to win that game, there is just no way around it.”
Edmonton enters their Christmas break in a life-and-death struggle for the final wildcard spot, with an 18-15-2 record through 35 games that is identical to last year’s. Of course, a year ago they were closing in on getting head coach Dave Tippett fired, and further down the road, a three-round playoff journey.
“Last year we got off to a racing start then fell off a cliff halfway through,” recalled McDavid. “This time around we have just kind of gone up and down. It has been a bit of a roller coaster. Two different ways to get to the same record.”
On a night where Bo Horvat had 2-2-4 for the Canucks, McDavid scored his 30th goal to become the first Oiler to score 30 goals prior to Christmas since Wayne Gretzky in 1986. He’s also the first NHLer to score 30 prior to December 25 since Alex Ovechkin in 2013.
There are a few Oilers whose offensive seasons are going well: McDavid, Leon Draisaitl (56 points), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (18 goals), Hyman (35 points), Tyson Barrie (27 points). But Edmonton’s team game has been a mess.
It’s a new problem every week.
“A lot of little things,” McDavid assessed. “It is a little bit like whack-a-mole — one problem pops up and you solve that, and then another one pops up. It is just consistency throughout our whole game — five-on-five, penalty kill, power play — all of it needs to be consistent on a more nightly basis.”
Vancouver had played the night before in an emotional, 6-5 overtime game, then flew to Edmonton. The Canucks let in five a night more often than not, and the Oilers — with the league’s best powerplay and its top two offensive producers — seemed a good fit to go into the Christmas break with a big night.
Instead, the Canucks were the team that scored on the powerplay while Edmonton’s went 0-for-3. It was the Canucks’ captain who ran the score sheet, not Edmonton’s, and Vancouver’s third stringer (Collin Delia) who was named a game star, not Edmonton’s No. 1 (Stu Skinner).
Vancouver simply worked harder and stayed with this game longer. As the old cliché goes, they wanted it more, and they got the two points.
“I saw the same thing as you,” forward Derek Ryan said. “I don’t think scoring goals is a problem here. I’ve said that a million times. We’ve got to work on playing better defence, and that’s not the defencemen. That’s the forwards, everybody.”
