THE BIG REVEAL
Stage is set for the Oilers to show who they really are
It’s only the 17th game, but after three straight losses the Edmonton Oilers find themselves at a fork in the road of their season.
They either get back to being the team they were in October, finding ways to win with different players rising up to make a difference every night, or they let this slump take root and risk reverting back to the underachieving team they were last year.
After getting off to a great start in a year in which they have a lot of proving to do, the Oilers added a little doubt to the equation on their recent 1-3 road trip.
They beat Detroit to go 8-41, lost a couple of reasonably well-played games in Washington and Tampa Bay, then laid an egg in Florida, where they were outshot 19-4 in the second period of a 4-1 loss to the last place team in the league.
Fatigue?
Momentary lapse of interest?
Just one of those nights that happens to every team in the NHL a few times a year? Perhaps.
But if it’s as simple as that, and their three-game losing streak isn’t the symptom of a bigger and more serious affliction, tonight against the Colorado Avalanche is a good time to prove it.
They don’t need three losses in a row turning into four or five and the season falling back into doubt.
“We want to get back in the win column, three games here is enough,” said defenceman Oscar Klefbom.
“We want to be one of those consistent teams where if you lose a game or two you get back on the winning streak quickly.”
The Oilers worked very hard to put together that 7-2-1 stretch in October, not only surviving the toughest part of their season, but using it to gain positive momentum. Letting it get away like this would be hard to swallow.
“You never want to lose three in a row,” said centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “We can’t let it be four in a row, we know that. Good teams don’t let that happen. We have respond well on Sunday.
“Last time we were at home we did a pretty good job of establishing ourselves, making it tough for other teams to come in. We want to make sure that we carry that on.”
Nobody on the Oilers is content with how their last road trip went — coming home 8-7-1 when they were 8-4-1 with three games to go — is a real downer. But nobody is thinking “here we go again,” either.
“We’ve been playing some good hockey, we’ve been doing a lot of good things,” said Klefbom, who believes that if it weren’t for a few AllWorld saves by Roberto Luongo and Andrei Vasilevskiy, a couple of those games could have possibly gone the other way. “We just have to find a way to find the net in those types of games. We still have positive energy within the group.”
Still, they’ve only scored five goals in their last three games (and given up 13) so, once again, lack of production is an issue. But it’s not THE issue.
“When you look at just the goal total itself you’re thinking ‘Geez they’re not creating anything,” said McLellan. “In the last three games of the road trip I thought we created numerous opportunities.
“Sometimes the goalie has your number, sometimes you don’t quite bear down or other factor come into play. But the fact that we did create is still a real positive for us, especially on the power play.
“I thought our power play looked dangerous in the games that we lost. We have to be careful that we’re not drilling down too much on that part of the game because the chances were there.”
McLellan is more focused on the one-on-one puck battles that they lost too many of in Florida. That is ultimately what the game boils down to on it’s most basic level: two guys competing for a puck.
“You have to have the puck to prevent goals and you have to have the puck to score goals,” said McLellan. “We didn’t have the puck very much in Florida. It started in the face off-circle. We were a little loose there and didn’t compete at the level I thought we could. Then it went from a one-foot area to four feet, to 10 feet and pretty soon they’ve got the puck and we’re chasing all night.
“Of our 16 games we’ve had a couple where we’ve been disappointed in that and the Florida game was one of them. Let’s see what we can do Sunday night to rectify that.”