Don’t look now, but for the third consecutive pre-season game the Edmonton Oilers surrendered six goals against, this time getting crushed 6-1 by the Winnipeg Jets.
In a game that featured probably 15 Jets regulars against about six for Edmonton, the Oilers’ best scoring chances ended up on the sticks of Seth Griffith and Drake Caggiula, while the Jets got offence from the likes of veteran snipers Kyle Connor and Nikolaj Ehlers.
Still, Edmonton has lost their last three pre-season tilts by a combined score of 18-5. With four games left in the pre-season schedule, you can expect a focus on defensive play as the National Hockey League season approaches.
“It’s very important that we shake that rust, find our game, and as we get closer to the end of the pre-season we’ll have a lot closer of a roster to what we’ll have (in the regular season),” said head coach Kris Knoblauch.
Connor Brown tipped home the only Oilers goal Wednesday, with Edmonton trailing 6-0 late in the game.
Jet lag
Brett Kulak was the veteran NHL defenceman on an Oilers squad that had two NHLers on its blue line — he and Ty Emberson. They played together for much of the night.
“First game in three months,” said Kulak, who posted a minus-three in his pre-season debut. “It’s awesome to play against pretty much a full roster of veteran NHL players. It was a perfect scenario.”
The shots were 37-27 for Winnipeg, with defenceman Noel Hoefenmayer (20:39) leading the Oilers in ice time, going plus-one and assisting on Brown’s goal.
“No one has really played together much before,” Kulak said. “You’re just trying to keep it simple… take a step forward and get your game ready for the regular season.”
Knoblauch put his lines in the blender in the third period. With four games left, Edmonton cleared out a few players Wednesday (below) and will let a bunch more go after Monday’s home game against Vancouver.
“Obviously they were a much more veteran team,” Knoblauch said of the Jets. “Almost their NHL lineup — which is a good test for our guys. In a situation like that you find out if you are NHL ready or not.
“Some guys, you can tell they just aren’t quite ready. It’s a good teaching opportunity for us.”
Best of the rest
It’s hard to find players who stood out in a 6-1 loss, but we’ll give it the old college try:
• We’re watching Emberson every night with his expected role on the Oilers defence this season, and he seems to have the tools to play as a regular. But he’s a long way from the finished product — he’ll have to find some consistency shift to shift, an easier task once he lands a stable partner as the rosters get whittled down.
Emberson activated nicely on Winnipeg’s second goal, but failed to get a puck deep past a Jets defenceman. The play turned around in the blink of an eye, and Connor ended up on a clear cut breakaway, sliding a puck through Stuart Skinner’s legs on a nifty move.
• Noah Philp continues to show he has the elements of a solid fourth-line centre. We wouldn’t keep him around as a 13th forward quite yet however — he needs to play every night in Bakersfield after taking a year away from the game. He fed Caggiula for a couple of Grade A’s.
• Skinner saw his first work of the pre-season, played 40 minutes and allowed four goals on 27 shots. He made some very good saves but wasn’t going to keep this Oilers roster in this one. With four pre-season games left Skinner will get at least two more appearances, we’d suspect. He got some good work in versus the Jets.
• Mike Hoffman is in camp on a PTO, as the 34-year-old one-time 30-goal man tries to extend his NHL career. He may find a way to do so, but it likely won’t be in Edmonton. In a game where the Oilers were offensively challenged, Hoffman’s stats line read zero shots, zero points, three giveaways and a minus-one on a Jets shorthanded goal that started with a poor Hoffman pass.
Here today, gone to Bako
The Oilers announced that the following players have been released from their PTOs and will report to AHL Bakersfield:
Jasper Weatherby (F)
Brett Brochu (G)
Connor Corcoran (D)
Alex Kannok-Leipert (D)
Cam Wright (F)
Also loaned to Bakersfield were:
Matvey Petrov (F)
Connor Ungar (F)
Jayden Grubbe (F)
James Stefan (F)
Healthy Viking
Training camp is enjoyable again for defenceman Mattias Ekholm, who nursed a hip injury through last year’s camp and well into the season.
“Such a difference,” he said. “Just to be able to feel really good physically, it’s been amazing. It’s nice to be part of things.”
He went to a Cup Final and lost as a Nashville Predator in 2017, and did it again as an Oiler last spring. It’s bittersweet, to say the least.
“The good thing about doing that, is you have a good feeling inside, of what you did as a team. We didn’t make it all the way, but we got darn close, and that’s something that (gives us) momentum,” he said Wednesday morning. “We were in that Game 7, and now we got to try to find that momentum right away as we go.
“The only experience I have of it, we had a really successful season the year after.”
After going to the Final in 2016-17, the Predators won the Presidents Trophy the following season with 117 points. If Ekholm can repeat that success this season, it will be with his old buddy Viktor Arvidsson, a fellow Swede who joined Edmonton as a free agent.
“We played about eight years together in Nashville, and kind of grew up together. So to have them come here, it’s been amazing,” Ekholm said. “I know that they’re both from northern Sweden. They love the snow and the cold, so they chose to come here.
“He’s got two kids, and both of our daughters go to the same preschool. We live five blocks from each other, so it’s been easy for us to help them out with the little things that you have to take care of when you move — especially when you move with kids.”
