There were no hard feelings in the Oilers' locker room after their game-tying goal was disallowed on Saturday.

"It's what you learn at five years old."

That's what Corey Perry had to say about the offside call that took the Oilers' tying goal off the board in the dying minutes of their 4-3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night.

And while fans and media get upset and up in arms about coach's challenges and offsides, most players are in agreement: offside is offside, no matter how close it is.

"Offiside's offside," Perry told reporters after the game. "Doesn't matter if there's a challenge or not. You just put it behind you and move forward."

Leon Draisaitl, who scored the disallowed goal, said afterwards he had no idea the play was offside, but accepts it all the same.

"At the end of the day, it is offside, that's the rule," Draisaitl told the press. "Obviously we have to live with that, sometimes it's unfortunate that it's centimetres."

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Of course, coaching staff watch every zone entry closely to determine whether it's worth challenging, and the Oilers were no different on Saturday night. 

"We saw it on the bench, we kind of felt it was coming," head coach Kris Knoblauch said after the game. "We did feel it was offside, so we were preparing as if the call was getting overturned, so we were set for it."

It was a fair assumption: the Maple Leafs have now won 12 consecutive offside challenges going back to 2022.

For better or for worse, the offside challenge is part of the game now. Coaches know it and players know it, and the only thing that can be done is to bounce back. Though they couldn't quite find the equalizing goal, the Oilers certainly bounced back from the demoralizing call on Saturday night.

"I thought we had a couple great chances right after that," Perry told reporters. "We had a plan in place, we executed, it just didn't go in the net."

"We had our chances."

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