Sens head coach Travis Green described the performance as flat and said, "We definitely made a few soft plays that made it easier for them."
The Ottawa Senators appear to be falling back into old habits.
On Tuesday night, the Sens fell 5-2 to the Edmonton Oilers, a team at the end of a road trip that had played the night before. Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard each had three points while Stuart Skinner made 27 saves for the win.
Tim Stutzle and Josh Norris scored for Ottawa, Linus Ullmark made 26 saves, and head coach Travis Green described the performance as flat.
"It's frustrating for sure," Green told the media. "I thought we had a flat practice yesterday. I thought it carried over to our game today."
For the first time this season, the Sens are mired in a three-game losing slide. During the three-game funk, they've given up 14 goals. They've fallen below .500 again with an 8-9-1 mark, and they're now 2-13-1 against the Oilers in their last 16 meetings.
"It's a tough league to win in if you're not playing with energy," Green said. "And if your game's flat, you don't pass the puck as well; you don't get open as well. We made a couple of glaring mistakes that were obvious. But I just thought, in general, our game didn't have the energy that it had when we played well.
"We definitely made a few soft plays that made it easier for them."
Evan Bouchard opened the scoring for the Oilers early in the first period. He went end to end to beat Linus Ullmark. On his way, Thomas Chabot defended him one-on-one like it was non-contact beer league hockey, failing to get the puck or the body as Bouchard drifted past him easily.
The execution in front of Ullmark didn't get much better from there, as Jake Sanderson lost track of the greatest player who ever lived. After Tim Stutzle had tied the game at 1, McDavid slipped behind Sanderson and as Ullmark kicked out a harmless shot, Sanderson not only failed to tie up McDavid, he accidentally kicked the puck right on to McDavid's stick for an easy goal to make it 2-1.
The Oilers got a 5 on 3 after another mistake when Claude Giroux played the puck with his glove off a faceoff. Using Artem Zub as a screen, McDavid ripped one home from the top of the circle to make it 3-1 and Edmonton never looked back after that.
We're still a long way from declaring this to be another bad start, but things don't get any easier for the Sens, who host the 11-5-2 Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday night.
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