VINTAGE OILERS ON ANOTHER LOST NIGHT
Members of NHL’s greatest team witnessed another lacklustre effort
An inordinate number of fans showed up at Rogers Place Monday having dug out old Oilers jerseys from 1985 to celebrate the occasion.
The players that had been feted the night before for being named greatest team in a vote of 3.5 million fans as part of the celebration of the NHL’s 100-year anniversary were paraded to centre ice before the game.
They watched the unveiling of the banner that had been raised the night before and felt the love one more time.
Back when the announcement of the Oilers being named greatest team was made, the thought was it would be the perfect time for Edmonton fans to celebrate those greats one last time and then stop living in the past right then and there.
Indeed the Oilers expressed the thought this would probably be the last time they’d all be gathered together for an occasion like this.
But there was no fast-forward to the future unfolding before their eyes with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and the 2017-18 Oilers.
Instead the fans sat down as the greatest team left the ice and contemplated, as they have every night this season, whether or not the Oilers would give up the first goal of the game.
They didn’t.
So there was that.
The Oilers didn’t make it 11 first-shot-on-goal-of-the-game disasters from the get-go. Cam Talbot stopped the shot. He also stopped the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th shots.
That’s when the penalty-killing unit took the ice.
The 31st-ranked penalty kill in the league with the worst home percentage in the history of the NHL gave up their 48th of the season (and 36th at home) and the Oilers were down 1-0 for the 35th time in 55 games so far in the most disappointing season in Oilers history.
At least after taking care of that business as usual today’s Oilers were able to give yesterday’s greats an indication of the future they have shown just often enough to keep the fans going to the games.
Edmonton came back to score three goals by the end of the second period including a rare short-handed penalty shot goal by Draisaitl.
And while he’s not exactly playing with Jari Kurri, the old Oilers were able to witness a sample of what McDavid brings including his 23rd goal and 65th and 66th points of the season.
Those were the positives. The negatives were all over the ice, but the biggest culprit was Talbot in goal.
Thanks to two terrible goals given up in the second period, his already shabby save percentage of .902 went south again as six goals got by him over the course of the evening in what turned out to be a 7-5 loss.
When you list all the things that have gone wrong this season, and it’s a long list, goaltending has been right near the top.
Talbot was all world last year. This year, although there’s been a tad of turmoil in front of him, he’s just not giving this hockey club the support back there on anything resembling a consistent basis.
While the Oilers greats were deprived of witnessing one of those first-shot-of-the-game goals, they saw a reasonable facsimile to open the third period.
The Oilers somehow managed to give up a breakaway goal only 18 seconds into the period to give the Panthers a 4-3 lead.
And then back to the dreaded penalty kill.
Twelve seconds. First shot. 5-3. When Talbot stopped a long shot a few seconds later, the crowd gave him a Bronx cheer.
As was the case when they opened the period, the Panthers split the defence again like the Oilers were skating in quicksand and created another breakaway. Penalty shot. Goal. 6-4. Edmonton had the character to battle back on a goal by Anton Slepyshev to cut the gap to 5-4 and McDavid brought it back to 6-5.
But that was to be it as the Panthers sealed the deal with an empty-net goal.
At a time of the season when they needed to put a significant winning streak together, the Oilers lost their fourth game in a row.
The Oilers now hit the road, visiting Vegas Wednesday and then have back-back-afternoon games to complete a three-game road trip. With this being the first real chance to catch Vegas flu (they played in Phoenix the night before in their previous visit) and the Oilers record playing afternoon games, that should go swell.