EDMONTON — It’s crazy, but 20 minutes of hockey wasn’t enough to win a game Tuesday night for the Edmonton Oilers.
Yeah. All those cliches over all those years about “putting in a full 60?”
Well, it turns out they weren’t kidding.
“We’re playing some good hockey, but we can’t take any nights off,” said fourth-line centre Curtis Lazar. “You’ve got to put together a solid 60 minutes each and every night. Twenty minutes isn’t going to cut it.”
In the 20 minutes the Oilers did put the work in — the third period, trailing 2-1 after 40 minutes — New Jersey goalie Jake Allen was outstanding.
The Devils, playing their third game in four nights and on the second night of a back-to-back, walked out with a 2-1 win, denying the Oilers a three-game win streak — the ninth time this season the Oilers have failed to stretch two straight wins into three.
What does it all mean?
“I honestly have no idea,” said big Mattias Ekholm, his face still red from a furious push with the goalie pulled that just couldn’t push a puck past Allen. “It’s not that we’re in here focusing on it. It’s just ended up being that way.
“We’ve had good responses after losses. We’ve been, I guess, able to string two together.”
Sure, you can’t win ‘em all, but this loss was more wasteful than most, against a small Jersey team that’s had trouble scoring. For the Oilers, getting to three goals on home ice should not be a Herculean task — even with Leon Draisaitl back home in Germany tending to family matters.
“I didn’t love our love our game in the first 40 (minutes), for sure,” Ekholm said. “We were too easy to play against.”
The head coach agreed wholeheartedly.
“We just kind of thought it was going to be easy,” said Kris Knoblauch, whose team was coming off of back to back shutouts where they had scored five and six goals. “Our previous two games were (easy), but not because we didn’t work. We did.
“We just anticipated it was going to be easy (against the Devils). Once we dug in in the third period and showed some urgency — nothing fancy, we didn’t draw up any plays — it was just a lot faster and a lot quicker. We won some more battles and got some more scoring chances.”
Alas, Allen was razor sharp, and got the luck that was commensurate with the high level of his game. The Devils won both ends of their season series with Edmonton, a 5-3 win at Newark and a low event, 2-1 nail-biter here in Edmonton.
Goalie Tristan Jarry made his first start on home ice since joining the Oilers back in December, stopping 15 of 17 New Jersey shots. He allowed one goal he won’t like, but stole a couple he had no business stealing.
Jarry was far from the problem on Tuesday, giving his team every chance to win a game they slept in for.
Jarry and Connor Ingram have taken turns starting games over the last six outings, which leads us to believe Ingram will get the start Thursday against Stu Skinner and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Meanwhile, Connor McDavid was held off the scoresheet for the second time in four games — and the first time in his career against New Jersey. The Oilers captain had a point in every game he’s ever played against the Devils in his career — 17 games, 31 points — until Tuesday.
It’s amazing that only Edmonton and St. Louis have failed to string together three wins this season. Every other team has done it twice, except for the Los Angeles Kings, who have just one skein of three straight.
“I don’t think I have an answer for that,” Knoblauch said. “You think of the games that we lost, it can be taking bad penalties, goaltending, poor defence, just not being able to score goals. The Islanders game was probably one of our best games of the season — the goalie stole that from us (1-0 loss). Early in the season against Minnesota, we got shut out 1-0 and I think that was one of our best games of the season.
“But there are other times when we didn’t show up to play early in games or at all. Tonight, in the first two periods we didn’t show up.”
