The Edmonton Oilers have played two games this season, scored 14 goals, allowed 13 and walked away with three of four points.
Can anyone play defence anymore?
Edmonton followed Tuesday's 6-5 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks with a 9-7 win over those same Canucks on Thursday, and I'm starting to wonder how badly Mike Babcock yelled at these guys after Game 1. Whatever he said seemed to work for about 40 minutes.
The Oilers walked into Rogers Arena, scored five unanswered goals, built an 8-2 lead, then Vancouver scored with one second remaining in the second period. They scored three more times in the third, and suddenly an 8-2 hockey game was 8-6 with 13 minutes left.
“Nobody is in here saying ‘Way to go,’” Connor McDavid said. “We understand that the game has to look a little bit different, but I thought the first 40 is what it could look like a lot of the time and what it should look like a lot of the time. Guys working hard, tracking back, responsible with the puck and just kind of rolling over them. We have to replicate that 40 minutes.”
For 40 minutes, Edmonton did a lot of what it spent training camp talking about, such as managing the puck and not giving Vancouver much of anything. At one point midway through the second period, Edmonton had eight goals, and Vancouver had four shots.
That's a pretty good night if everyone goes home after 40.
The problem is that NHL games still have that third period, and Edmonton spent most of it looking like the team they were last season and nothing like the team they claimed they would be.
Babcock said Tuesday's loss was ridiculous. I'm not sure what word he has left for blowing most of an 8-2 lead two nights later.
“Weird to be excited about the ninth one,” McDavid said. “But it was a big goal at the time.”
Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal gave Edmonton some room after Vancouver had turned a six-goal deficit into a two-goal game.
The Oilers were also missing Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jason Dickinson and Matt Savoie, so there are certainly worse ways to come out of the first two games.
“I'm happy for the guys, happy for myself, we got three of a possible four points, but we have tons of examples of where we have to get better,” Babcock said.
There are 13 goals against worth of examples.
“We know we can be way better,” Babcock said. “What I saw tonight was a group that can play right, that knew what they were doing and then I saw a group that didn't do it.”
That's pretty much the Oilers through two games.
They've scored enough to win both of them. They've also given up enough to lose both of them, and Vancouver has been allowed back into games Edmonton had every opportunity to control.
So what happens when Florida comes to town?
The Oilers aren't going to score nine goals every night, McDavid isn't going to put up five points every night and an 8-2 lead shouldn't require another goal before everyone can relax.
Babcock wanted structure, and through two games he's gotten about 40 minutes of it at a time. That's enough to leave Vancouver with two points on a random Thursday in October.
It won't be enough every night.
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