Oilers looking for answers
At 14-10-0 on the season and second place in the North Division, the Edmonton Oilers are still a pretty good team, they just aren't as good as the Toronto Maple Leafs right now.
The Leafs hammered that point home — again — with their second convincing victory at Rogers Place in as many games. Fresh on the heels of Saturday's humbling 4-0 defeat, the Oilers found themselves on the wrong end of a 3-0 score in the Monday rematch.
“We're in a little rut, teams get in a little rut,” said head coach Dave Tippett. “It seems like nothing you're shooting is going in the net. Point shots, deflections, usually you can find one or two of those, but they're not going in for us right now.”
It was another disappointing performance on all fronts, from weak goaltending to untimely defensive mistakes to a total lack of offensive punch from a team that prides itself on being able to score with anyone.
Edmonton's top players were silenced again, with Leon Draisaitl extending his personal scoring drought to six games and Connor Mcdavid being shut out in back-to-back games for the first time this season.
“There's not a lot of juice in our group right now,” said Tippett. “It happens during the season when you're down on energy and down on emotion. Unfortunately, it's coming at a tough time for us right now. It should be a big series against Toronto and we haven't played very well.
“There are parts of our game that aren't where they need to be right now and we just have to start building them up again.”
It doesn't mean the Oilers are in trouble, or reverting back to their old ways, it just means they can't hang with the best team in Canada right now, which is a bit of mystery, considering they were 2-2 against Toronto before this series began.
Why have the Leafs pulled away?
“They're playing well, they're a good team,” said defenceman Darnell Nurse. “It's a tough challenge, but it's a challenge we're more than capable of taking care of. We know we can be better. Obviously there's another level we have to get to because we haven't won the last two games.”
Edmonton had been playing some very strong hockey at home, but a chance to improve to 6-2-0 in their last eight games at Rogers Place fell by the wayside by the time the game was 20 minutes old.
The Leafs were up 3-0 at the first intermission and never looked back in padding their gap on second-place Edmonton to eight points. They can push it to 10 by sweeping the third game of the mini-series Wednesday night.
“They hopped out to the lead, they checked well and they were on top of us all night,” said Nurse, repeating the same reasons for why they lost the first game. “We've gone through stretches where we've played really well and put wins together and sometimes you're going to go through two games like this.
“We know our game, we know that if we keep getting pucks to the net and find a way to grind a little more O-zone time we'll be able to get on the right side of this.”
Mikko Koskinen got the start in net for Edmonton after a three-game break and, just as Mike Smith did on Saturday, saw his roll come to an ignominious end. He'd won four of his previous five starts, with the only loss coming in that 6-5 loss to Calgary when he was starting for the 12th time in 13 games, but he didn't make it to the start of the second period after giving up three goals on 10 shots in the first.
The goaltending wasn't great in either loss, but that doesn't matter a whole bunch when the team doesn't score a goal for six periods against a pair of seldom-used backups. Jack Campbell, playing his third game of the season, shut them out on Saturday and Michael Hutchinson, playing his fourth game of the season, got the job done on Monday.
The Maple Leafs were also short staffed up front, too, but it didn't matter — Edmonton is 0-3 against Toronto when Auston Matthews is out of the lineup and 2-1 when he's in.
“It's unusual for us to go two games without a goal, but it's not for lack of trying,” said Ryan Nugent-hopkins. “Eventually it's going to break through for us. We were rolling before this, it's a blip on the radar.”