Oilers just don’t matter
With its wealth of talent, fans confounded by Edmonton’s inability to contend with best
EDMONTON — Bottom line: Even with Connor McDavid — either the best or second-best player in the universe — the Edmonton Oilers are irrelevant again around the National Hockey League following last year’s great ride.
They are the most disappointing, confounding team in the NHL today. After 28 games last season, they were 14-104. This year, they are 11-15-2.
And with the season one-third gone, that’s no small sample size.
They are six points out of a wildcard spot in the West with five teams to get past. While Anaheim is 12-11-6, scraping out points without Ryan Getzlaf and Ryan Kesler, and Vegas has 11 more points with a lineup that is obviously better than flotsam and jetsam, the Oilers can get no traction.
They have lost to Buffalo, who had lost seven in a row, to Philadelphia, a team that had lost 10 of 11, and they scraped out a home win against Arizona even though the Coyotes were better on that night. They’re losing to Tampa or Nashville or Los Angeles. They haven’t played the top three teams in the league. And time’s running out. McDavid is at a loss to explain the difference between this year’s team and last. Really, they have only lost Jordan Eberle, who had five goals in his last two league games to get to 20, and Benoit Pouliot, who could kill a penalty but, as defensive forwards go, is no Bob Gainey. They also don’t have Matt Hendricks’s gumption, but he only played 40 games last season.
It’s the same team, with Andrej Sekera out with knee surgery.
Against teams in the top 16 in points right now, the Oilers are 4-11.
McDavid has always been a glass half-full kind of guy, even it will take a big gulp 35-19 record in their last 54 games, .650 hockey, to get to a potential playoff cutline of 94 points.
“It’s a long way from over, it’s still early December, there’s a lot of hockey left and a lot of divisional hockey left. Nobody’s going to roll over in here,” said the captain, who has yet to stand in front of the media and yell that “this is absolutely unacceptable the way we’re playing.”
He’s right that they’ve only played five Pacific Division games and they’ve gone 4-1, but before they get a run of those games, they especially have to start beating Eastern teams where they are 1-7 at home and 5-17 overall, and they go to Montreal, Toronto and Columbus on their upcoming trip..
Teammate Mark Letestu isn’t a glass half-empty guy, but he’s also realistic.
“At this point, if you’re thinking there’s still a lot of time (left), you’re being pretty naive,” he said. “We’ve put ourselves in a situation where we have to be desperate every night and we have to have the two points.
“There’s a lot of teams between us and the playoffs right now and we have to jump a lot of them. If we think there’s a lot of time and it’s going to come if we stick with it, then that’s being naive. We have to step it up here, otherwise it’s going to be gone.”
Desperation hasn’t seemed part of the Oilers’ vocabulary this year. The urgency has been absent to start games. They’ve given up the first goal 18 out of 28 times, eight games in a row at one point.
And at home, the welcome wagon’s out for opposing teams.
“There’s been some where we’ve been ready off the start but we’ve been waiting our way into games, waiting for something to happen, then react,” said Letestu. “The way the season’s gone, we don’t have to the time to do that anymore. We don’t have dog days anymore, we’ve run out of them.”
Oilers coach Todd McLellan says the hunger isn’t there from the opening faceoff.
“We’re looking to impose our will on teams. It’s like we’re waiting for an individual catalyst or a situation to poke or prod our team to get going,” he said.
“Today’s practice was a prime example. It was designed to get going and we needed a little bit of barking to activate people and once we barked at them, they responded extremely well.”
But that’s practice. The Oilers seem incapable of dictating how the game will be played in their barn. There is no one thing that can be fixed to make everything alright, bad starts aside.
The penalty kill can’t stop teams from scoring here even if it’s a fourth-liner like unsung Jordie Weal, who has three goals all year.
“We always seem to come out sluggish (at home) and we’re waiting for something bad to happen before we start to play,“said McDavid.