Mistakes mount as Oilers lose on Long Island

After the Edmonton Oilers eked out a Tuesday night win over the New York Rangers on the back of a tremendous performance from Stuart Skinner, the team knew there were some things to address.

They were sloppy early, turned over far too many pucks, and could’ve let the game slip away if not for their netminder. Turn the page to Thursday night’s game against the New York Islanders, and there was the opportunity to fix those mistakes.

And considering the Islanders had allowed 13 goals against in their first three games of the season — all losses — maybe the offence could find a spark.

Instead, the Oilers were sloppy early, turned over far too many pucks, and let the game slip away, losing 4-2.

“I thought it was kind of the same at the start of the Rangers game, too,” said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who scored one of the two goals. “We obviously talked about it and wanted to address it, but didn’t do a good enough job of that tonight. We’ll move on and look to keep it simpler, especially at the start of the game.

“I mean, you just can’t turn the puck over and let them get momentum. And I thought we responded better in the second period, but it got away a little bit.”

The spotlight shone bright on one turnover-prone Oiler, Evan Bouchard, who coughed up a puck in the neutral zone to allow Mat Barzal a breakaway on the game-opening goal, and didn’t see Bo Horvat get behind him on a second period power play.

It was all three facets of the game where the Oilers struggled as a whole, though, allowing Horvat to score on an Islanders power play in the third period, as well as on an empty net to seal the win and his second career hat trick.

“I know people can be hard on him for the mistakes, but I mean you, you also got to look at the upside that what he brings,” said Bouchard’s defensive partner Mattias Ekholm. “I’m sure he knows that he could have made some, some other decisions tonight.

“There’s other, other games and you saw the other night when he’s just plowing through a defender or their forward and just makes everybody look silly and things that I wouldn’t even think of.

“I’d be careful criticizing him because that’s who he is, and obviously, he knows that he would want it back. But there’s going to be nights, there’s going to be mistakes where that happened. And I think one of Evan’s superpowers is he forgets quick and he just goes out there and plays his game. So I’m pretty sure we’ll see a different Bouchard on Saturday.”

Hopefully it will be a different Oilers on Saturday, too, when they take on the New Jersey Devils for a 1:00 pm MT puck drop, only to head to Detroit to face the Red Wings at 1:00 pm MT on Sunday.

“We got to address it as a team,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch of the sloppy play. “We always talk about things that we’re doing well and things that we need to improve on and giving up the odd man rushes, that’s obviously one of them.”