Lukewarm Edmonton Oilers Flirting Disaster at Quarter Mark

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New York — This is bad.

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In fact, it’s not far from being really, really bad.

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It’s not a negative thing, it’s that you can count.

At the quarter mark of the season, the Edmonton Oilers are a .500 team just 10-10, bogged down in a cycle of slow starts and defensive collapse, with no sign of things changing anytime soon.

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And, as we all know, the .500 team doesn’t make it to the playoffs by about 15 points. If the Oilers are still in a rut a month from now, they can say goodbye to the playoffs.

“Obviously, we have to do better,” said veteran Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. You have to start playing like that, man, everyone has to step up and find a way to get through this.”

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There are many things they have to go through. First, they aren’t good enough defensively, and that part is even incontrovertible, with visual evidence plus wide-open opponents enjoying game after game around the Edmonton net, but There is a statistically obvious skid his mark. The Oilers are 28th in shots per game, 29th in goals per game, 31st in shorthands and 21st in penalties in the league.

These are not baseline numbers for a team on the rise.

“Frankly, I think our defense has been better lately than it was at the beginning of the year, but it’s clear we still have a long way to go,” said captain Conor McDavid. We have to be picky in the zone and tougher in front of our net.”

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Second, they are not ready when the puck drops. In almost half of their games this year (8 of 20), they’ve trailed him 1-0 within five shots of him. Also, the number of times he allowed a goal within 2 minutes of the start of the second period was 6 times.

He’s trailed 11-1, 11-0, 12-2, 8-1 on the shot clock in four of his last seven games.

Third, their bottom six have practically no identity. They don’t score much. They don’t hit much. They don’t make energy. Admittedly, it’s hard to find traction as bottom six players on a team that weighs heavily on the top two line, but their contributions aren’t enough.

The Oilers have scored 66 goals this year. McDavid, Leon Drasiaitl, Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Evander Kane are 50 of him. 7 defenders. His ten other forwards, meanwhile, he has nine goals.

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So the team with the two top scorers in the league is currently 12th in the league.

After how good the Oilers looked in last year’s playoffs, the day-to-day days are over. Sure, making the playoffs every year becomes automatic. Different this season he will never change for 2018.

But they are now on the verge of a surprising relapse.

“We’re working to find out who the Oilers are this year,” head coach Jay Woodcroft said. “We’ve done some good things, but haven’t done anything good enough in a long time to put something together the way we want it to.”

Who the Oilers are, according to their records, is a .500 team. We can’t ignore their strength or their schedules, their brutality, or how losing Kane for three months was a big blow, but what we’ve seen in his first 20 games is enough, if not enough. did not.

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“I think results can be delayed,” Woodcroft said. “We are not where we want to be, but we are not far from where we want to be.

What they’re hoping for is that the wave they put together last season will come again and save the season.

“It’s a really resilient group,” said Darnell Nurse. “Last year (2-11-2) we went through a stretch where the sky was pouring down on us.

The difference between then and now is that the Oilers were first 16-5 overall when they started that slide. They had 11 games worth of breathing room at the quarter mark. Nothing today. They are 10th in the Western Conference.

And last year they fired their coach and got an adrenaline shot by adding Kane, but neither will happen anytime soon.

They should fix this without any additions that change the landscape. And fast.

“It’s a quarter way. We’re not sitting here in April going through a recession like this,” McDavid said. “The team is coming back after a losing streak and is winning six or seven straight.

Email: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

Twitter: @Rob_Tichkowski