Oilers probably haven’t hit rock bottom yet
Saturday’s rout pushes team into self-parody
It is eerie, perhaps maddening, how cool, calm and collected the Edmonton Oilers can be after a disgraceful performance such as the 8-1 pasting they absorbed Saturday night against the Calgary Flames.
They certainly were like that after the loss to the Flames, reflective, apologetic, perplexed. But hardly enraged.
To their credit, the players were all at their stalls when the media slouched in to collect some quotes about the latest fiasco. They faced the music and, good for them, for what it’s worth.
Taylor Hall, he of the hurled water bottle that splashed head coach Dallas Eakins on national TV, calmly said the players are not embarrassed by the loss, but that he must manage his emotions more effectively.
Goaltender Ben Scrivens offered himself up as a target for verbal abuse, even the odd stream of spittle from an enraged fan, but please, respect the team’s sacred jersey.
One player angrily, profanely suggested support staff close the locker-room door, the better to shut out the noisy, angry rumble of the fans milling about on the concourse. I was thinking, leave the door open, the players might learn something.
Maybe somebody should start shouting, tossing the stick rack, overturning the trash cans in the lockerroom. Show some emotion. That sort of eruption must be especially frowned on now that the Oilers are housed in that schmancy showpiece of a locker-room. Pity, that.
Eakins offered the hope this ugly loss was a “blip on the radar.” Some blip; some radar.
The game followed on the heels of an indifferent performance to the Buffalo Sabres which, to be fair, came after the team fashioned a 104-3 record in recent weeks.
More damning, the 8-1 shellacking was the worst loss the Oilers ever suffered at home to their provincial rivals.
But, listen, anybody can talk a good game after the fact. Sadly, the Oilers seem to be experts at it.
Of course, the Oilers have had plenty of practise at developing the dubious skill of post-game rationalizing, having lost 38 games this season, 18 of them in front of a too-often bitterly disappointed Rexall Place crowd.
This season, some fans have opted to be “interactive,” shall we say, tossing replica jerseys onto the ice surface to express their disgust. The first one fluttered forlornly to the ice after the Oilers had been hammered 6-0 by the St. Louis Blues back on Dec. 21, one of five shutout losses at home for Edmonton this season.
After that one, Eakins publicly suggested that particular fan had “quit on the team,” a response long on loyalty to the cause, woefully short on accountability to the fans. More than a few fans seem to believe the head coach has that dynamic precisely backward.
At this point, the count is up to six or seven tossed jerseys this season, including the one Scrivens scooped up with the blade of his goalie stick and flung right back into the crowd on Saturday.
Another night, one fan got into a shouting match with general manager Craig MacTavish outside the Oilers’ locker-room. Only the most obtuse members of the team could possibly be unaware of the justifiably cranky mood out there in the Heartland of Hockey.
The Oilers, something of an NHL laughingstock, now are descending into self-parody, their earnest inspirational words being splashed back in their faces as this brutal season lurches to a conclusion.
After Saturday’s game, one fan tweeted that Eakins was angry with Hall after the surprise mid-game spritzing because this surely was no way to “chop wood and carry water.” That was a sarcastic reference to one of the many motivational messages the head coach has installed in and around the team’s locker-room.
That fan might have been kind. The sight of a head coach and his star left-winger bickering over spilled water on national TV in the middle of a debacle of monumental proportions — to borrow a well-known MacTavish utterance — was ridiculous, plain and simple.
Look, Saturday night, like too many nights this season, was about the Oilers badly letting down all their fans. Not the other way around.
Forget being calmly analytical after the fact. How about being intensely emotional in the heat of the battle and regrouping DURING the game? As opposed to leaking useless emotion over spilled water?
Yes, Eakins tried various methods to achieve that. He pulled starting goalie Viktor Fasth; he called a time out early on to blister his players verbally; he benched Hall for his petulance. None of it worked.
The Oilers were incapable of, say, gathering themselves and going out to “win” the third period, even if the game itself was a goner.
Something else. Fans tempted to grasp at the straw that this, surely, was rock bottom should think again. The Oilers face the Anaheim Ducks three times in their next seven games and play the San Jose Sharks twice over the same span.
Never mind talking about their game or about how much pride they have for the jersey that Gretzky, Messier, Coffey et al wore. The Oilers have to find a way to channel that pride into a finish to the season they and their long-suffering fans can stomach.