EDMONTON — Inexplicable. Inconceivable. Inexcusable.
After how last season started, after how this group with the same veteran core and so many returnees vowed history wouldn’t repeat itself, that the Edmonton Oilers have lost their first three games — and decisively — doesn’t make much sense.
That’s sure the case for those doing the losing.
“I’m sure there’s lots of ways to explain it. Ultimately, it hasn’t been good enough,” captain Connor McDavid said. “I’ve said that numerous times here. Up and down the lineup — myself, first and foremost — everybody can be better. Everybody will be better.”
The Oilers dropped their third contest of the new season’s first week when they fell 4-1 to the Calgary Flames on Sunday.
Slowed by overturned goals from Corey Perry and Derek Ryan late in the first period and early in the second, the Oilers faded to the point where the Flames took over in the third. The Oilers allowed three unanswered goals in the third period, including one into an empty net.
That’s nothing new for this team, which now has a minus-12 goal differential amid the disastrous start.
“I don’t know if surprise is the word,” veteran blueliner Darnell Nurse said. “Everyone’s coming in here and working and trying to do the right things.
“We have to take it to another level and work our way out of this spot that we’re in right now.”
There’s a lot to fix.
The Oilers have boasted perhaps the sport’s most electric offence since they became a perennial playoff team in 2020. They suddenly can’t score. They have just three goals.
McDavid has just two assists this season as his chances diminish to become the third-fastest player to 1,000 career points. He needs 16 points in eight games to tie Mike Bossy for third at 656 games.
Zach Hyman, he of 54 goals plus 16 more in the playoffs last season, has yet to net his first.
Offseason signee Jeff Skinner has a goal and an assist, including his first tally as an Oiler on his first shift Sunday, whereas Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have just a single point each. They’ve gotten little out of Viktor Arvidsson.
Jeffrey in Edmonton 😏 #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/DH90QapElX
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) October 14, 2024
That their best forward through three games might be Perry is perplexing considering he’s 39 and has mostly been on the fourth line.
The offensive spark will surely come soon enough, just as it did last season. Until it does, it’s a huge problem.
The Oilers haven’t come close to finding their top gear when they were supposed to bolt out of the starting blocks.
“Nobody wants to lose. Everybody’s going out there and working hard,” Hyman said. “It’s about bringing a level of urgency, though, and doing your job and just worrying about what you need to do and understanding that everybody else is going to go out and do their job.
“We’re not playing up to our standard.”
Worse still, their best players haven’t been reliable enough away from the puck, either. That was apparent Sunday.
Hyman and McDavid missed Rasmus Andersson on the Flames defenceman’s path to the slot before he riffled a shot past Stuart Skinner. Hyman also lost a battle for a rebound in front of the Edmonton net to Anthony Mantha, who then backhanded home the loose puck. That stood as the winning goal.
“We’re getting beat in a lot of battles,” McDavid said. “We’re getting beat in a lot of different ways.”
It goes beyond the big guns. This has been a total team failure.
The Oilers aren’t getting enough saves. The turnovers in the defensive zone have been jaw-droppingly bad. They can’t break the puck out, a critique that’s just as much on the forwards who are providing little support as it is on the defencemen attempting to make the passes.
“The puck play’s been bad all over — guys fumbling it, guys not handling passes: passes in the air, passes behind guys. Just not good enough in terms of the puck play,” McDavid said. “When you’re not clean with the puck, it’s tough to generate offence. It just is.”
More succinctly, the Oilers can’t command their style of play, something they’re flummoxed by.
“If we had the answer, we wouldn’t be sitting here at 0-3,” Nurse said.
The Oilers look like they’re still figuring out how to play as a cohesive team. Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch used the word “disconnected” to describe their play. He’s bang on. Perhaps he’s contributing to that.
The lineup wasn’t just tweaked heading into the first installment of the Battle of Alberta. It was completely revamped.
Knoblauch flipped around his top two and bottom two left wingers to create four new forward trios. The top six was altered after the third Flames goal almost midway through the third. Draisaitl and McDavid became the focal points of the top line with a combination of Arvidsson and Perry; the latter was rewarded for a strong showing amid a low workload. Nugent-Hopkins centred Hyman and Skinner.
Additionally, Troy Stecher was tabbed to play his first game of the young campaign and took Ty Emberson’s spot next to Brett Kulak on the third defence pair.
That’s a lot of changes. Throw in that Travis Dermott moved up to replace Emberson next to Nurse partway through the season opener, and the top blue-line duo of Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard is the only grouping that has remained intact.
Knoblauch said he’s struggling to find the right combinations.
At least the penalty kill thwarted all three Flames power plays after giving up five goals while short-handed in six chances against in the first two games. Connor Brown had one of the Oilers’ best chances of the second half when he stripped Jonathan Huberdeau at centre ice and hit the post on a breakaway. It was a small victory that didn’t amount to a real one.
“We need a little more life, a little more juice out of our group,” Nurse said.
Do they ever.
The Oilers didn’t even start 0-3 last season despite that godawful first 12 games that saw them go 2-9-1 and caused hockey operations CEO Jeff Jackson to fire coaches Jay Woodcroft and Dave Manson.
It would be a leap to suggest the Oilers are heading down that road yet again. They could easily be the NHL’s best team the rest of the way — just as they were for the last 69 games of the season after Knoblauch was hired — and catapult themselves to another Stanley Cup Final.
It’s just that the Oilers are a long way from that level of play.
“When you had a season like we did last year, then coming back and then expectations being really high, I don’t think there’s enough desperation,” Knoblauch said. “This game is about desperation. Right now, we’re lacking that.”
The outcome is the type of start the players were emphatic wouldn’t happen again. Injudiciously, it has — much to their coach’s bafflement.
“I don’t have any answers for that,” Knoblauch said. “We know that it’s important. It’s not that we’ve just coasted through. There’s one thing about saying it and really being prepared for it.”
Whether ill-prepared or just failing to execute, the first three games have left the Oilers with yet another early hole from which to recover.
“We’re not quitters in here. We never have been,” McDavid said. “Losing three in a row off the bat is not ideal, but nothing we can’t work out of.”
(Photo of Leon Draisaitl: Perry Nelson / Imagn Images)
