The goaltending cloud that the Edmonton Oilers have been living under all season has never really been Calvin Pickard’s fault.
It has, however, increasingly become his problem.
Connor Ingram has arrived on the scene and is slowly playing his way into the picture as a tandem mate to Tristan Jarry.
So, if Jarry has one of the chairs and Ingram is comfying up in the other, where does that leave Pickard?
Playing like his hair’s on fire, that’s where, stealing a game in Winnipeg by a 3-1 score — a rare moment in recent Oilers history where the other team leaves the building knowing it got goalied.
“Calvin was our best player,” said his head coach, Kris Knoblauch. “Unfortunately for Picks, we’ve played some of our worst hockey when he’s been in there, and that’s been reflective in his stats. It hasn’t looked that good, but we just haven’t been that good in front of him.”
Pickard ate Sunday dinner with family in the town that sent him and his older brother, Chet, on long Western Hockey League careers as goalies. The next night, he ate the Jets’ lunch.
“Steak, ham, perogies, rice, Caesar salad,” he said. “It was a Pickard special.”
And so was his performance in front of family and friends. The Jets wired a season-high 42 shots at Pickard, who was beaten only on one bouncy, sloppy puck that Adam Lowry fished through his pads from the top of the crease.
He’s a pro’s pro, a backup’s backup. A survivor who’s been in pro hockey since 2011 and, after all he’s been through with the Oilers, still finds himself fighting to stay on the roster once Jarry gets healthy.
“There’s some time between starts here,” he admitted. “But I’m confident. I’m in my third year here, I’m confident behind the group and just trying to do my job.”
Winnipeg really poured it on in the third period, with 16 shots on goal. Leon Draisaitl had a key shot block in the dying moments, and Zach Hyman’s defensive play stripped a puck from the dangerous Kyle Connor, just as he was readying to rifle one at the Oilers’ goal.
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It was a night where the Jets didn’t get what they deserved, but the Oilers earned what they got. A playoff-type effort in December, if you will.
“This team’s been through a lot, a lot of playoff games and sacrifice,” Pickard said. “You see Leon make a big block. You see all these guys make big plays. Hyman had a great stick lift right before we iced the game (with Hyman’s empty netter). A lot of good experienced players that make big plays at the right time.”
Over in Winnipeg’s room, they’re tired of leaving the rink with the proverbial ham sandwich.
The Jets have one win in their last 10 games, and are winless in six. They have one line that scores — the Mark Scheifele, Connor, Gabe Vilardi unit — and Pickard shut them down.
Everyone else is shooting blanks, and the Jets sit in 30th place in the NHL standings.
“We need points. We need the points,” repeated a frustrated head coach, Scott Arniel. “We have to find a way to score more goals than the opposition, and we have to get points.
“I can’t criticize the effort. I can’t criticize the battle,” he said. “The opportunities, the game plan that we threw at them against their elite players. All of those things I asked them to do, they did it. At the end of the day, we’re not getting points, and that’s the most important thing.”
On this night, fourth-liner Max Jones opened the scoring, while Jack Roslovic’s power-play goal came with the second unit on the ice for Edmonton.
Draisaitl didn’t have a point, while McDavid’s lone assist came on Hyman’s empty-netter. It pushed his points streak to 13 games (13-20-33).
“We’ve been winning so many games on the sticks of Connor and Leon,” Knoblauch said. “Tonight … we got depth scoring, a power-play goal (from) our second unit, and a Max Jones goal. It’s nice to see the other guys contribute.
“We should be able to win once in a while without (McDavid and Draisaitl) having to be A-plus.”
OIL SPILLS — Fun fact: Max Jones’ father, Brad, played parts of four seasons for the original Jets, between 1987-90 … Edmonton has a power-play goal in eight straight games. They’re operating at 44.8 per cent over that span.
