Too little, too late as the Oilers fail to comeback against Penguins

The Edmonton Oilers must’ve gotten their timezones mixed up Thursday night, as their failure to start the game on time cost them.

Stinkers are going to happen but what transpired from the Oilers in the first ten minutes against the Pittsburgh Penguins was outright pungent. A good shift or two to start the game was quickly for naught, as Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust and Kevin Hayes would all score before the halfway mark of that first period.

From that point on, all the Oilers could do was chase the game.

“We weren’t ready,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “They outworked us, they outskated us. The attention to detail wasn’t there.

“We had a heck of a game effort wise and work ethic against Boston, and the first 20 minutes tonight we absolutely took off. The deficit was too big for us to overcome.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying, though. Leon Draisaitl would get one back shortly after the Hayes goal, but a minute later, Drew O’Connor regained that three-goal lead. Woof. Sidney Crosby’s 12th of the year extended Pittsburgh’s lead even further, though another from Draisaitl, and a goal from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins — his seventh in his last 12 games — would offer some hope, it just wasn’t enough.

But the loss wasn’t a surprise to Knoblauch.

“Nothing surprises me in hockey. You go one from one game to the next, and you can put together a big string of games, play an unbelievable game, then the next one you’re not ready,” he said. “It was too big of a hole to overcome.”

Maybe some credit is due to the Penguins in this one. Surely they heard all the stats, like how the Oilers had won seven straight meetings prior to this, outscored a staggering 37-9. Maybe they were just hungrier.

“I’m sure they’re not happy about that,” said defenceman Brett Kulak. “Everyone’s always aware of stats like that, and if a team’s got your number for a while, you always got an extra little bite in your game coming into it, for sure. There was probably a bit of that that led to their good start.”

Stuart Skinner couldn’t make the saves he needed, the defence couldn’t break up the cycle as they needed, and the forwards seemed to forget which way they were supposed to skate in a period that saw the ice tilt heavily. It’s not as though the Penguins were getting a big number of high-quality looks, either, generating just 2.03 expected goals at five-on-five while scoring four goals there.

Burn the tape, reset and forget, whatever it is, the Oilers need to do it ahead of Saturday. One-off games like these will happen to the best teams in the league, but what becomes important is keeping it from bleeding into the next.

Edmonton squares up with the Chicago Blackhawks next on Saturday night, and while the Connor Bedard-led club is nestled into the last spot in the league, they upset a high-powered Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night 3-1. The Oilers will catch them on the second half of a home back-to-back, though, as they welcome Detroit to town on Friday, so maybe this is a spot they can pounce on.

“We have a chance here on Saturday to have a 3-1 road trip, that’s pretty good, so that’s the focus right now,” said Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm.