EDMONTON — When you lose at home to the Anaheim Ducks, there are no excuses.
No talking about all those shots on goal (49), all the goal posts, or how good some cat named Lukas Dostal was in just his eighth NHL game over two seasons.
Because here’s the deal: Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard — two important, Top 4 defencemen here in Edmonton — made just enough mistakes that the Oilers could not outscore them in a 4-3 Ducks win. It was Anaheim’s third regulation win in 32 games this season.
“It’s the mistakes that come off of our sticks — my stick — that just can’t happen,” said Bouchard, who took his turn in front of the post-game media only because Nurse had been there the game before, admitting to costing his team a point against St. Louis two nights before.
“Too many individual mistakes from everyone — defencemen, forwards — and then we’re maybe a little out of position after that where we’re chasing it,” said Leon Draisaitl.
He was talking about the big mistakes. The gifted goals that opponents really don’t have to be earned.
“That’s fair,” he said.
There’s some good news, in that Edmonton only allowed 17 shots on net. Do that every night and you’ll win plenty.
But there are issues here with this blue line, and they centre around Nurse’s defending and Bouchard’s seemingly constant lack of awareness.
When is there danger? Where is the opponent? What’s my gap?
Bouchard doesn’t have answers for any of those of late, and it is costing his team points in the standings. So is Nurse’s play — and he’s a highly paid veteran and a leader on this team.
Bouchard will learn. Nurse is supposed to have this down by now.
“Anytime you can hold a team to (17 shots on goal), you expect to win the game — especially when you pour 49 on the opposite net,” head coach Jay Woodcroft said. “The big errors are within our control, and we’ve got to clean them up.
“(Bouchard) is a young D-man who’s going through a stretch where simplicity might be his way out of it, rather than complexity. Simple plays with the puck. Simple reads with the puck,” the coach continued. “He’s a young man who is learning his way in the National Hockey League. Unfortunately, those chances against ended up in our net, and the margins were thin today.”
Here’s how it broke down for Nurse and Bouchard, both of whom are limping through tough patches in their 2022-23 campaigns:
After opening the scoring on a long, well-placed shot, Nurse made two blunders to allow Anaheim to tie the game 1-1. It began with a poor clearing attempt that was picked off and ended when he drifted away from his man on a two-on-two, only for that man (Sam Carrick) to tap in a pass from the back door while completely unattended.
The game before Nurse had been the culprit on two goals in a game that went into overtime at 3-3. There have been, by any measure, far too many giveaways and missed assignments this season for Nurse, who is being paid $9.25 million to be Edmonton’s top defender.
Of late he has been anything but.
Then there was Bouchard, who only three games ago (and three games before that) had been directly responsible for missed coverages on game-winning goals against Minnesota and Washington.
On Saturday, with Anaheim leading 2-1, Bouchard nonchalantly tried to saucer a pass to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins — as the last man back. It was picked off by Ryan Strome at Edmonton’s blue line, and Strome scored on the ensuing breakaway.
Then, after the Oilers had crawled back to a 3-3 tie, Bouchard screened his goalie needlessly as John Klingberg’s winner went in from a bad angle. He was looking over his shoulder at a Duck in a back-door position, but rather than attending to that player he stood in goalie Stuart Skinner’s way — neither checking his man nor blocking the shot.
That’s three game-winners in the last seven games that fall directly at Bouchard’s feet.
Sure, he’s young. But this is the NHL. If you’re playing here you are expected to play like an NHLer.
What do you do when these things keep happening?
“You learn from it. You know, it’s happened too much recently. You go back to the fundamentals, keeping things simple,” Bouchard said. “When the mistakes, the turnovers you’re making are big ones, they usually end up in the back of our net. We’re leaving Skinner out to dry a little bit here.
“Turnovers, at least for myself, need to get cleaned up.”
Too many goals against are a problem this season, and as we move towards the second half it is undoubtedly their defensive game that will be the difference between another hopeful Cup run or bitter disappointment as another year of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl goes to waste.
As of this writing — after the Oilers game but before the completion of Saturday’s slate of games — the Oilers stood:
• 22nd in goals against per game (3.41).
• 23rd in shots against per game (32.7).
• 25th in penalty killing (73%).
Teams with those stats don’t win multiple playoff rounds, plain and simple.
Offensively, the big boys need some help here. This team is powerplay reliant, and on nights when the big boys don’t produce, they can’t score enough.
Jesse Puljujarvi (one goal), Devin Shore (no goals), Mattias Janmark (one goal), Kailer Yamamoto (two goals) and Warren Foegele (three goals) represent the depth scoring that simply has not been there. To have just seven goals combined from these five players is a problem, and we can no longer see what keeps Puljujarvi in this lineup, frankly.
“If you look at the goals against in the last 12 games (38),” Woodcroft said, “ I wouldn’t say we’ve had a hard time keeping it out of our net.”
That’s still a GAA of over 3.00, coach, and of those 12 opponents, five have been Arizona, Anaheim, Montreal, Nashville and Chicago.
The team game isn’t so bad, defensively.
But unless the individual games — of Bouchard and Nurse in particular — don’t improve, it will be a short post-season, if they get there at all.
