Sharks take young Oilers to school
We’ll see soon enough if Edmonton can bounce back from Game 4 beating in San Jose
EDMONTON — Lessons can be learned overnight or over time.
The Edmonton Oilers have now put themselves on the hot seat to learn now or learn later.
Some people will be trying to sell you the idea that a loss is a loss and it doesn’t matter if it’s 7-0 or 1-0.
I think it matters a lot. And that can be a good thing.
If the Oilers had lost to the San Jose Sharks like the Montreal Canadiens lost to the New York Rangers Tuesday — a 2-1 result — to also head home tied 2-2, there wouldn’t be exclamation points behind it.
Most of the Oilers haven’t had to deal with anything like this before. Now they can’t hide from it and it’s not going to sneak up on them. The clock is now on the team to find out which it will be. Learn now? Or learn later? Losing 7-0 to the San Jose Sharks in Game 4 was a combination of humiliating and embarrassing compounded by several incidents.
n Leon Draisaitl spearing Chris Tierney in the family jewels. The NHL fined Draisaitl $2,569.44 on Wednesday, the maximum allowable under the CBA. But no suspension.
n Connor McDavid losing his composure in several isolated incidents.
n Taking a too-many-men penalty in the third period on a power play.
n Giving up the seventh goal to Edmonton native David Schlemko just as the crowd started chanting “We want seven.”
You can dig back in the history books all you want, but in 255½ Stanley Cup playoff games, that was — singularly and spectacularly — the worst loss in Edmonton Oilers post-season history.
After head coach Todd McLellan preached and preached about the modus operandi of the team he used to coach — jumping all over you the first 10 minutes — the Oilers allowed the winning goal 15 seconds into the game and were down 2-0 by the 11:02 mark.
After preaching about taking too many penalties in games 1 and 2, the Oilers were back at it again, this time fuelled by frustration, and allowed a Sharks power play that had scored once in the first 15 tries to score on four of seven attempts Tuesday.
But their big failing has been to allow a Sharks team that came into the series a beat-up bunch physically and even mentally, considering their skid at the end of the season, to twice get up off the mat, first in Game 1 and now again in Game 4.
Edmonton had a chance here to win a short series. Now they’ll have a lot tougher team to dispatch in a long series.
The big thing was to allow their big boys to get going.
Joe Pavelski, Brent Burns, Logan Couture, Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton had the combined total of one point in the first three games. They had 11 points Tuesday night. Hello McDavid. Hello Draisaitl. Hello Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Hello Jordan Eberle. Hello Milan Lucic. You’re now up. McDavid hasn’t gone three games without a point in his NHL career. He didn’t produce a point in either game in San Jose. He has a goal and an assist from the two games in Edmonton.
Draisaitl has one shot on goal. He has no goals and no assists to show for the first four games.
Nugent-Hopkins has a 0-0-0 stat line as well. Eberle has one assist. Lucic has a goal and an assist. “They’re learning a lot. Our top scorers haven’t experienced this level of hockey,” McLellan said after the game.
Game 4 in San Jose was a shockingly sensational loss. But if the inexperienced Oilers handle it right, it was another night in the classroom of their Stanley Cup education. If not, they’ll have to spend all next year to get back to this point and try it again.
And if they don’t, you can bet general manager Peter Chiarelli won’t be keeping everyone around to learn those lessons. People keep forgetting there’s more to this than giving Edmonton a playoff series to experience again; it’s to find out which players to go forward with and which players to move.