EDMONTON — How worried were we supposed to be about an Edmonton Oilers team that looks just fine right now?
Certainly, us media types wonder every fall how hard we should pile on the Oilers’ annual slow start. And yes, sometimes we all overreact.
“Ya think?’ offered Leon Draisaitl, whose lethal one-timer from below the right dot is equalled only by his clinical one-liners at the expense of a particular scribe.
C’mon, Leon.
Even you guys must feel some relief when, after groping around in the darkness for 20-25 games, a level of play like the one displayed in a 6-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets finally arrives.
“Sometimes you lose confidence in your own ability and the ability of the group a little bit. And sometimes you’re in a little lull before you get out of it,” Draisaitl allowed, after a 1-1-2 night in which he played just 16:10, a season-low. “Nobody wants to start the way we have the past couple of years … but at the end of the day, there is an underlying confidence within our group that we know how to play.
“We just have to do it more often at the start of the year.”
Neither Draisaitl nor McDavid have logged 20 minutes in either of the last two games, this 6-2 drubbing of the Jets or a 9-4 whitewash of the Seattle Kraken on Thursday. Both cashed six points in the two games, and got some rest at the same time — a win-win for a team that tends to drive its top two guys the hardest when it’s playing its collective worst.
The fact that the Oilers have strapped together a 4-2 run and an aggregate score of 15-6 over the past two games tells us the two-time Western Conference champions are right on schedule. They’ve found their game at its base level, with 53 games left to hone the edges to the fine grind that has carried them to eight playoff series over the past two seasons.
“We always believe that we are going to find it, but it’s never something that we think is going to automatically happen,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, scheduled to play career game No. 1,000 in January. “We understand that it’s going to take a lot of work, and sometimes you think you’re working, and it’s not happening, and that can get frustrating.
“But when we stick together as a group inside this room, that’s when good things happen. And that’s what we’ve done so far.”
With two games left on this homestand — Buffalo on Tuesday, Detroit on Thursday — it’s an opportunity for the Oilers to bank points before leaving on their last Eastern road swing of the season on Friday.
That’s how rough their schedule has been in the opening third of the season: For the first time in team history, Edmonton will have completed all of its Eastern Conference travel before the Christmas break. Like the Jets’ current woes, travel counts when assessing why a team is having trouble finding its mojo.
Down the way, the road-weary Jets were packing bags full of sweaty hockey gear and picking their egos up off the dressing room floor
As well, after a game in which they simply were not competitive until it was 5-0 Oilers with less than a period to play.
“It’s hard,” lamented Jets head coach Scott Arneil. “You’re trying to take steps forward, you’re trying to gain points no matter how you do it, and that’s another big step backward. And we’ve been kind of repetitive on doing this, we’ve got to find a way to get that consistency in our game.”
This matchup wasn’t even fair, with one team rested and on the rise, and a Jets club playing its seventh game in 11 days, while mired in a 2-6-1 dip.
The Jets played at home the night before against Buffalo, then hopped back on the bird for Hockey Night in Canada in Edmonton. It’s a schedule that puts them squarely on the spot for an Oilers team that’s finally at home, rested, and finding its offensive touch.
With goalie Connor Hellebuyck out of the lineup due to knee surgery, Edmonton burned through both Jets ‘tendies in this one, a game Edmonton led 5-0 at the 23-minute mark, and cruised through the remaining 37 minutes.
“With us playing last night, they got on us early,” said Winnipeg’s top centre, Mark Scheifele. “That’s usually what you try to do when a team is coming off back-to-backs, especially with travel. We hung Coms (goalie Eric Comrie) out to dry in that first period, and it’s tough to rebound from being down four-rip.”
Even tougher when it becomes five-rip just 2:42 into the second period.
Wrong place, wrong time for the Jets.
Right place, and finally, the right time has arrived for Edmonton, a place many suspected they would arrive eventually.
Ya think?
