Khaira shows Oilers’ coach he got the message
Todd McLellan called out his role players several hours before the team’s shootout loss to the Washington Capitals on Sunday. He was tired of them coming up far too small around the net through the first six weeks of the season.
“We have 10 players who have played in our bottom six and they have about two goals,” the Edmonton Oilers’ head coach said.
The message was clear and some of them responded, particularly Jujhar Khaira, who scored his first of the year.
After sitting out six games in a row and raising the public ire of McLellan for being a total nonfactor when dressed, Khaira played 14 minutes on the third line with Ryan Strome and Iiro Pakarinen, all of whom figured in the Oilers goal.
Of the five goals the bottom-six guys have now scored, three were on the power play.
“Some of the support guys showed up with some urgency and it paid off, because we were able to get something out of the bottom-six players,” McLellan said.
“Now they’ve got some momentum, let’s carry it forward, put it on the ice Tuesday at home against Vegas.”
Like Khaira took Jussi Jokinen’s spot. By the measure of most NHL pro scouts, he’s too good for the American Hockey League, but only teases you at the NHL level. He has McLellan feeling exasperated.
“He played like he wanted to stay in the lineup and he’ll get another chance Tuesday,” he said.
Khaira knows he’s under the gun, that the coaches haven’t been thrilled with him.
“I’ve been practising hard and the coaches have been keeping me honest and in game shape. I felt like I had my legs early,” Khaira said.
Khaira did make an error on Dmitry Orlov’s tying goal. He let Orlov come off the point and beat him to the high slot for the goal on backup Laurent Brossoit.
“I got beat off the boards and that can’t happen. I’ll take that and learn from it, and improve,” he said.
“Mistakes are made. Nobody plays perfectly. If you go out and compete and battle hard, we don’t expect you to be perfect,” McLellan said.
“We can recover from those type of mistakes and his game, as a whole, was what we needed.”
McLellan chose not to mix up his first two lines, even though the troika of captain Connor McDavid, Patrick Maroon, Leon Draisaitl has been quiet the last half-dozen games.
McDavid has two goals, Maroon has none and Draisaitl has three. They had 12 shots at even strength but couldn’t beat Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby.
Off his team’s 2-1-1 record on this four-game trip, McLellan said he firmly believes the team’s offence “will come.”
But the Oilers are almost 20 games into the season, and they already have played 12 games in which they scored two or fewer goals, and five games when they scored one goal or none.
“Our whole game has to polish up a bit, but that first line had a lot of chances in and around the blue paint against Washington,” McLellan said.