Babcock Calls Oilers 7-2 Loss to Maple Leafs a Step Back: "That Should be Automatic"

Mike Babcock isn't ready to call his Oilers' embarrassing 7-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs the start of a trend, but he didn't like what he saw Saturday night. At the very least, he needed a night to comprehend why his group didn't show up. "For me to get all wound up here... I already stood there... in your own building on Saturday night; that should be automatic. Should never get outworked."

Babcock gave credit where it was due: "The bottom line is they were better. They were better than us. So we can blame anybody we want... Jim Hiller had a group playing harder, and I had my group... That's on me. "

The coach wasn't the only one to recognize Edmonton fell short.

"It's a shame," said Kasperi Kapanen, who was part of a bottom-nine that struggled most of the night. "It's a Saturday night against these guys. You know, what we live for as hockey players, and it just wasn't enough today."

"They were a better team. They played harder. We just got to find a way to compete more," said Colton Dach. 

Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard all started for the Oilers. They were the highlights of a night with very few. Draisaitl had two goals, and McDavid and Bouchard had two assists.

That's pretty much where the good news ends.

Tristan Jarry got the start in goal - a scheduled start despite the injury to Devon Levi. He allowed six (one an empty-net goal). The narrative, of course, is now that Edmonton is in real trouble, given there is no injury update on Devon Levi and Frederik Andersen isn't close to being ready to return. Jarry wasn't great, but the rest of the team didn't do him any favors. 

It was a big-time matchup where the 8-1-1 Oilers were looking to stay red-hot and send a message on a national scale. The message was that they weren't up to the task, at least on this night. 

Toronto overwhelmed the Oilers early. Even the Toronto faithful in the stands outchanted the ever-decreasing number of Oilers fans. On the ice, there were moments of physicality and grit —some rough battles and a Connor Murphy tilt—but there wasn't much "fight". 

The shots on net were almost even. The score certainly didn't reflect that. 

The Oilers were disjointed. In the second, a terrible Jake Walman change led to a two-on-one, and Easton Cowan set up Auston Matthews for 2-0. Troy Stecher made it 3-0 right after. Toronto’s speed and Edmonton’s top-line breakdowns were the takeaway early on. 

Leon Draisaitl got one back late in the second, finishing a McDavid feed on a 4-on-4 with a floater through traffic while Evan Bouchard screened Anthony Stolarz. The momentum didn't last. William Nylander restored the lead with a power-play goal to make it 4-1 Toronto.

Draisaitl scored his second to make it 5-2, but the game was already out of reach. Edmonton pulled Jarry with 2:19 left, and Nylander hit the empty net 15 seconds later. Vinni Lettieri added another with 30.7 seconds left, making it 7-2.

This was never a game the Oilers were really in.

Unlike Thursday's late heroics over the Hurricanes, the Oilers didn't have the pushback they needed against Toronto. Babcock admitted, "They're a really good team. I thought they were ultra-competitive. I thought they took over at times, and my hope for today was that we were going to match that level of competition and then raise it. We didn't do any of that, so that's a step back."

The coach liked what he saw against Carolina. There was no carryover, just a hangover.

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