A date with the Colorado Avalanche at home looked like it could be a solid test for an Edmonton Oilers team trying to sort early-season woes once again, but it ended with fans walking out of Rogers Place with more than 10 minutes left in the third period, rightfully angry. 

A 9-1 loss saw not only the Oilers give up their most goals in a game since 2009, but it also saw Stuart Skinner pulled after giving up four goals on 13 shots, while Calvin Pickard allowed five goals on 21 shots as neither goalie would finish the night with a save percentage over .800.

But there's plenty of blame to go around on a night like Saturday. Ten Oilers finished with a plus/minus mark of minus-3 or worse, and were dominated in high-danger chances (18-6) and scoring chances categories (39-19) in all strengths, according to Natural Stat Trick.

With the quarter mark of the season fast approaching, only the Calgary Flames are preventing Edmonton from being in the basement of the Pacific Division. Now, almost two weeks into November, the Oilers have only a single win in the new month and have only average production so far this season, as they've only scored 2.94 goals per game. The Columbus Blue Jackets and Chicago Blackhawks are both ahead of the Oilers in that category.

Jake Walman wasn't afraid to be brutally honest about not only the loss, but the start to this season. 

"I feel like we deserved this tonight, we're not really trending in the right direction for a while and kicked our a-- tonight,"  Walman said. "To a guy, we all owe it to everybody in here to figure out what kind of our role is, everybody's role on the team is, and do it because we're not right now."

Colorado's Demolition Job Should Finally Wake Up the Oilers Colorado's dominant 9-1 win exposes Oilers' flaws. MacKinnon, Makar lead a terrifying, deep Avalanche squad.

For Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch, he knows that at 6-6-4, a bit of self-reflection is needed with this team, as once again, they failed to rise to the standard they need to win against teams like the Avalanche.  

"I think we've only played a handful of games of those 16 that I'd say, yeah, that looks like more of what we expect," Knoblauch said. "I think we're getting into that area that we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and find out what we need to do to play better."

While nothing in the Pacific or West has been decided, playing behind the eight ball early for a third year in a row might be too big a hill to climb out of for the Oilers unless something is corrected, and corrected sooner than later. 

Avry Lewis-McDougall has more in his latest video column.

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