As the Edmonton Oilers get ready to play their biggest rival down the road in Calgary for the third and final time this NHL season with a full three and a half months left and two games against a hated foe Columbus still to come, here’s what we know in OilerNation.
The Oilers aren’t a hot mess but they are distressingly inconsistent.
If the playoffs started today, this up-and-down team wouldn’t qualify. Not only are they not in the top 3 in the Pacific Division which grants them automatic entry to the post-season, they are not a wild-card team.
They’re a shade over. 500 with 38 points in 35 games.
Is it too early to panic?
Yes. The Los Angeles Kings, second in the Pacific with 44 points, have played two more games than the Oilers, so they’re well in sight.
Is it too early to worry, to get mad or any other synonym like infuriated?
No. The expansion Seattle Kraken are third in the Pacific, and they’ve played three fewer games than the Oilers. And the object is to just make the playoffs and then see what happens. Still, this Oiler team, 5-7 in December, isn’t breeding a lot of confidence.
What a difference a year makes, eh?
Well no. The Oilers have exactly the same 18-15-2 record after 35 games as last season, on route to getting a good man Dave Tippett getting fired along with his right-hand man Jim Playfair with Jay Woodcroft and Dave Manson coming in. Their .543 points percentage, with the greatest player in the world Connor McDavid, who already has 30 goals in those 35 games, and also one of the top five or 10 best talents in Leon Draisaitl, is behind Calgary, the second wild-card team.
Their inconsistency is head-shaking. They go 7-3 in the first 10, then 3-7, then 7-3, now one win in their last five with losses to Anaheim, Vancouver and Nashville in there. Their overall record is meh, like Lauri Korpikoski’s game used to be here.
One night they beat the big and heavy Dallas Stars at their own game, in their own building on Wednesday. Then they lay an egg the size of the pysanka in Vegreville, at home against a Vancouver Canucks team that was tired and was playing a third-string goalie named Collin Delia, who has three wins in the last three years.
“Last year we got off to racing start (16-5) then fell off a cliff halfway through. That’s how we ended up here (18-15-2). This time around we have just kind of gone up and down. It has been a bit of a roller coaster. Two different ways to get to the same record,” McDavid said.
It’s more than roaster-coaster. Or a teeter-totter.
More like a toilet seat.
“Last year we got the trail-blazing start, then fell off a cliff for 20 odd games. This year, it’s a see-saw, back and forth. Win two, lose two, win two, right? It’s different but we’re at the same place and we have to figure out how to play the right way and not give away games. You want to go into the (Christmas) break feeling good and we’re not,” said Oilers winger Zach Hyman.
Last season, they went 31-12-4 over the final 47 games, finished with 104 points, and got to the Western Conference final against Colorado. It took 99 points to finish third in the Pacific in 2021-22t (Los Angeles) and 97as a wild card to make the top eight overall (Nashville). The Oilers need to go 29-17-1 to reach 97 this season and 30-16-1 to hit 99.
They do have four games left with lottery teams like San Jose, three with Anaheim, two with Arizona and the Blue Jackets. But they are done with Chicago. They have already lost their only meeting with the Ducks to another third-string goalie Lukas Dostal. So…
How do they get the magic of the last 47 games of last year back?
“Better defensively, more consistency,” said Oilers forward Derek Ryan. “I don’t think scoring is a problem here. I’ve said that a million times. We’ve got to work at playing better defence and that’s not just the defencemen, it’s the forwards, everybody.”
What the Oilers appear to be is mentally deficient when it comes to trotting out the same game night after night. They’re a threat at both ends of the rink. They can score, although they are 21st with 5-on-5 goals, they have an all-world PP (32.3%) and they have four players—McDavid, Draisaitl, Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins — with 84 goals. And when Evander Kane gets back in February, that will give them five excellent top six players.
The flipside, as we’ve said: Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto have four combined goals, one fewer than Ryan, who has shown some very tidy moves on breakaways, befitting a former offensive star at U of Alberta and in Europe before getting to the NHL as a role player.
Defensively, their PK is 26th (72.3%) and if you think they give up three or more goals every game, you aren’t far off. In the last 20 games, 16 times.
Woodcroft was the fresh new voice when he replaced Tippett and he got the Oilers playing the right way, right away, structured, not giving up a whole lot. He did a fine job but now, the Oilers’ identity seems to be inconsistency, with the Canucks’ loss a microcosm of what ails them.
Excellent first 20 minutes, lukewarm second, terrible third.
“We’re beyond the point of moral victories,” said Woodcroft.
“We have expectations with the effort, every night. Our execution…and too many mistakes as the game went on,” he said.
And, maybe the Flames are exactly what the Oilers need right now.
“It’s a big game no matter who we play. But Calgary, we know the history there,” said McDavid.
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