Good teams go on losing streaks but they don’t go on them for long
So which team is the Edmonton Oilers?
EDMONTON — This is as choppy as the waters have been so far this season for the Edmonton Oilers.
All teams go through rough patches. Even the 2018-19 Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues lost 3 in a row 3 times last season. It happened twice to the 2017-18 champion Capitals, too. The best 2 clubs from the past 2 NHL seasons.
But both of those clubs also pulled out of their dives before they gave too much back.
The 2019-20 Oilers need to do the same.
There’s a lot on that in this week’s…
9 THINGS
9. The NHL salary cap is currently $81.5M. There is some suggestion it may get to $84M soon. That and a couple expiring contracts will be key to how Ken Holland moulds this roster over the next 12-18 months.
8. The Bakersfield Condors are having a lukewarm, sub .500 season. One of the bigger issues has been goaltending. But Shane Starrett looked more like the 2018-19 version in Saturday’s 2-1 win with 20 stops. More please.
7. With Alex Chiasson’s power play goal against Toronto the Oilers have now scored on the man advantage in seven consecutive games. The last time the franchise did that was in March of 2008. Connor Mcdavid was 11 years old.
6. The Oilers miss Matt Benning . He has long had his detractors. But he’s also +32 in 229 NHL games. That sounds like a very serviceable 5-6. And every night he’s not in the lineup a rookie D-man is instead. Honestly? If the haters looked at it objectively, they’d change their opinions.
5. Ryan Nugent-hopkins’ assist Thursday was his 400 th career NHL point. The Nuge was the #1 overall pick in the 2011 draft. How are the other members of the top 5 from that class doing? Gabriel Landeskog has 426 points. Johnathan Huberdeau 396. Adam Larsson 122. Mark Scheifele 403. Hard to suggest that Nugent-hopkins is disappointing in any way.
4. Zack Kassian is also fulfilling some of the promise that made him a top pick (#13 overall) in 2009. So far this season he is 11-11-22 in 33 games. That projects to blow away his previous bests. Kassian is also a pending UFA. In fact, at 22 points he is the top scoring
UFA right winger on the board (although to be fair, Mikko Rantanen has played just 16 games). The Oilers are actively trying to extend Zack. But he won’t come cheap. I really can’t imagine him getting less than 3 x $3M. Worse players than him will get $4m.
3. Speaking of Adam Larsson : One of the silver linings though this four-game losing skid has been the play of big #6. A few folks gave Larsson a pretty rough ride as he struggled to come back from injury. They miscalculated how missing that much time at the start of a season matters. The whole league speeds up substantially at the 20-25 game mark. So Larsson merged into a pretty fast lane.
But his 5×5 CF the last 2 games has been 58.7 per cent and 59.9 per cent. If he and Oscar Klefbom continue this trajectory it may allow Dave Tippett to ease back on Darnell Nurse and (more to the point) rookie Ethan Bear a bit. And back to my earlier point, a healthy Benning would do the same.
2. The Edmonton Oilers have been in on Taylor Hall since the Devils agreed to put him out there. General Manager Ken Holland had in-depth, sit-down talks with his Jersey counterpart. You should assume that Holland went in with a fair price in mind. And you should also assume that if the Oilers don’t end up trading for Hall, it will be because Holland refused to move off that. We know that New Jersey is asking (at minimum) for a 1st Round pick and a top-shelf Defence prospect. If Holland was faced with giving up an Evan Bouchard or a Phillip Broberg with no guarantee of being able to sign Hall … Holland should have passed. I expect that he did. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if supposed front-runner Colorado did the same. We shall see.
1. With the 4-1 setback to Toronto on Saturday the Edmonton Oilers have now lost four in a row (three in regulation). That is the longest losing streak of the season. The scores of those four games would not suggest that they played especially well (3-2, 6-3, 6-5, 4-1). But the eye suggests otherwise. The Carolina setback was the worst of the 3. But a (much) superior goaltender is what beat them in Minnesota. And while they were the better club over long stretches against Toronto the Leafs also played well in their own zone. And the Oilers couldn’t finish. You also can’t play from behind in this league as much as the Oilers have lately and expect much different. That needs to change, pronto.
But often near the end of a losing streak, a team plays better than the result. I think we saw that at Rogers Place Saturday. And despite the slide the club is still just two points out of 1 st Place in the Pacific Division. Those shouting that the sky is falling probably just missed that fact.
So, if all that is true then the Dallas game where this thing ends right? One would hope so. But none of us will know until Tuesday night.
That’s why they play the games, after all.