"They Were More Competitive Than Us:" Oilers Get Outworked By Leafs

There are bad games, and then there's whatever the Edmonton Oilers did on Saturday night.

With the Toronto Maple Leafs coming to town on a Saturday night, the last thing the Oilers should have done was put together one of their most embarrassing performances of the season, losing 6-2 in their own building.

What else is there to say?

The Oilers were outworked, outplayed, and outscored by a Toronto team that seemed to skate harder, push for a whole 60 minutes, and want it more. Edmonton's bottom six contributed next to nothing, the defensive game was weak, and allowing six goals doesn't reflect well on the goaltending.

The Oilers' previous game was competitive, according to head coach Mike Babcock, who expected his group to carry that performance into last night.

“I loved our last game. I thought it was great. We played a really good team, and I thought we were ultra competitive,” Babcock said. “I thought they took over at times. I thought we took over at times and my hope for today was we were going to match that level of compete and then raise it. We didn't do any of it, so that's a step back.”

Babcock made it clear that Saturday's performance didn't reflect a larger trend of the Oilers' downward slope towards mediocrity. The Oilers have played some good hockey recently, and one ugly loss doesn't necessarily mean much.

But when the Maple Leafs come into Edmonton on a Saturday night and put six goals past you, you should probably be doing some internal reflection.

Babcock was critical of his bottom six, which struggled to provide much of anything against Toronto, and having had three players return to the lineup over the past week, there was some expectation that Edmonton would benefit from having a healthier group.

“I think anytime when guys are away and they come back, they're probably not as good. But their bottom six was better than ours,” Babcock said. “The bottom line is they were better than us. They were more competitive than us. They were quicker than us. They were better.

“If you look at our lineup, we got three guys back that we didn't have a week ago. But we also played way stronger teams this last little bit than we played at the start, and that's exposing us,” Babcock said.

The Oilers have to play good teams throughout the year, so I guess acknowledging there is work to be done is something.

“I thought we were going to be great. We weren't. But give them credit. They got ready. They came in here. They're on a road trip. They got prepared and they played harder and longer and faster than we did, better defensively, better offensively, just better,” Babcock said.

“So we can blame anybody we want as a group (but) Jim Hiller had his group playing harder than I had my group. So that's on me.”

Fair enough. Babcock is responsible for getting his players ready, and they clearly weren't. But the players have some responsibility here, too. It shouldn't take much convincing to get a professional hockey player motivated for a Saturday night game against the Maple Leafs in their city.

These are the games people look forward to. Two of the best Canadian markets going at it on Hockey Night in Canada is something a lot of people pay real money to see, and to watch the Oilers get out worked is disappointing for everyone.

What happened on Saturday was an effort that the head coach himself admitted wasn't competitive enough.

The Oilers had an opportunity to put together a good game in front of their home crowd, and they completely wasted it.

Afterwards, all anybody could really offer was that they weren't good enough, which is all that needs to be said.

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