After a dominant finish against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada last game, the Edmonton Oilers shipped up to La Belle Province, for a date with the Montreal Canadiens. Still in the early going of their last Eastern road trip of the season, building off the Leafs game would be huge. The Oilers have been a .500 team on their other two swings through the Eastern Conference.
Time to let consistency finally reign supreme. Did you know this team hasn’t won three games in a row all season? It might have been mentioned already.
The Canadiens themselves also played last night, blowing a 4–2 lead to lose in Overtime to the New York Rangers. Given that finish, and coming home from Madison Square Garden, you could reasonably expect the Habs to be motivated. This wouldn’t be a game the Oilers could take lightly by any means.
The first period played out nearly the same as it did last night for Edmonton: high-event, lots of shots, great goaltending. It stayed scoreless until the second period, when Ivan Demidov cashed in very early on the second Habs power play of the game. From there, Montreal took full control of the game, their motivation out-matching the Oilers’. This was still technically a winnable game for Edmonton, but they had no finish on this night.
Oilers lose 4–1. This team might never again win three games in a row. Here’s the game story.
Oilers were too obsessed with trying to get Draisaitl point #1000
In the spirit of the holidays, the host Habs were gracious enough to give Edmonton a full two minutes of a five-on-three power play early in the game. Neither call was really disputable, and here was the chance for the Oilers to stake themselves to at least a 1–0 lead. Preferably 2–0, if they could convert on both opportunities.
Now, credit to Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobeš, who was phenomenal on this night. The Montreal netminders have been much-maligned this season, which is why we haven’t seen much of Sam Montembault recently outside of those Hyundai commercials. Dobeš was huge in bailing his team out of a dire early predicament. And he would finish the night with only one goal against and a .964 save percentage.
But the Oilers clearly wanted Leon Draisaitl to be involved in the scoring play in some way, shape or form for his 1000th point. It made for a familiar issue: being overly fancy on a man advantage. Future opportunities in the game saw them not gain much traction, which happens. Sometimes, you match up against a team with a hungry penalty-kill corps.
But not getting at least one on a full-length five-on-three is inexcusable. Gotta find a way to cash that in, rather than letting it pass you by like lower-bowl seats at a home game for 100 bucks apiece.
Penalty kill can’t afford to keep having off-nights
Since the Habs have no milestones to be worried about, their focus can be just on scoring, and not letting the opponent rally. They did have a power play opportunity in the first period that got some good looks. And indeed, it would be a harbinger of things to come, but on that one they couldn’t convert.
Ivan “Demigod” Demidov would not allow a failed power play attempt a second time, however. 11 seconds into the next advantage, goal.
By midway through the third period, Montreal would hold a 3–0 advantage. And yes, the Oilers pay for another penalty taken. Trent Frederic did not have a good night, again, and the third period was a fine example of that. He got away with taking one guy down, then thought he could do it again to Alex Carrier in the corner. Spoiler: no, Trent, you cannot get away with it again.
Cole Caufield gets the passing sequence started; over to Lane Hutson, on to Juraj Slafkovsky, and to the net where Habs captain Nick Suzuki was waiting for a tap-in. An absolutely surgical play to cash in on that opportunity, but one of those passes, at least, has to be prevented. And Suzuki can’t be parked at the back door.
Just not a great night for a lot of players. A lot of talk is about the depth guys, and that’s totally valid, but the penalty kill, while no longer being the 60% disaster it was last season, is decidedly comme ci, comme ça this year. Some games, it looks stout, and playoff-worthy. Other nights, like this one, it underwhelms greatly. They have to figure out a way to stop underwhelming, because that literally is costing the team games at this point.
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Even when the Oilers did score, the Habs response was swift
Once Edmonton realized that yes, you are allowed to score without Draisaitl getting his milestone, they were given another man-advantage to work with.
Wouldn’t you know it, on Hanukkah no less, Zach Hyman cashes in from his familiar net-front spot. This guy has goals in three straight games now, which is an excellent sign for his Olympic hopes. That Team Canada roster will not be announced until New Year’s Eve. There’s still time for Hyman to end up on it.
Given this Canadiens team is one of seemingly several across the league who can’t make a 3–0 lead stick, there’s hope here. You have seven and a half minutes of time to work with, and claw your way back into a tie. As long as you don’t allow another goal against, this should be an easy—aaaaaaaand there goes Alexandre Texier. (Also, a moment of appreciation for the Habs’ French regional broadcast, RDS, having a Christmas-themed scorebug. More of these across the NHL, please.)
That was the point where it was perfectly acceptable to tap out like John Cena on this game. Even as the Oilers tried in vain to continue climbing the mountain, pulling Calvin Pickard even to do so, Texier’s goal was the dagger in this one. 3–0 was even going to be tough to come back from; 4–1 was a death knell.
This wasn’t the best performance for a lot of guys on the roster. Not by a long stretch. And the Texier goal is the epitome of what has happened when the going has gotten tough for Edmonton this season. All momentum goes away, they could still theoretically come back but you know they won’t.
This game isn’t entirely Pickard’s fault, could have ended worse
There aren’t many times you can validly say, about a 4–1 game, that the goaltender bears little blame for the outcome. This is one of those rare times. The Canadiens had several grade-A chances all night long, including multiple breakaways in Period 2. Miraculously, the only even sort-of-a rush chance they cashed in on was Texier’s 4–1 strike. Pickard snuffed out those breakaway chances that could have easily made this game end 6–1 or 7–1.
This observer promised last night to not look back on past games this season, and will abide by that otherwise. But it must be said, even to those who refuse to listen, this team’s issues earlier in the season went beyond the goaltenders.
Yet Pickard, along with the one who got shipped out, continued to get thrown under the bus. With Pickard, it was somewhat warranted as his numbers, both basic and advanced, were porous. With the other goalie, who began November with a .900 save percentage and had a positive Goals Saved Above Expected then, it bordered on being irrational and asinine.
Anyway, Elliotte Friedman already said things about that. This game isn’t so much Pickard’s fault, as the team was only half there. This observer needs a really large cup of the finest local vanilla-chai tea to deal with this headache.
Player perspective
“We didn’t seem to be able to get any sustained offence five-on-five, and it was mostly one-and-done.” -Mattias Ekholm
The revenge game looms ahead on Tuesday
The Oilers move on south of the border, where their first opponent after doing so will be… the Pittsburgh Penguins. Well, this is awkward. But also a perfect recipe for an emotional night.
The last we heard, goaltender Stuart Skinner and defenceman Brett Kulak were still clearing customs. Likely though, they’ll arrive in the ‘Burgh in time for Tuesday night’s tilt, and face their former team. So too, on the facing-former-team front, will Tristan Jarry, who played really well against Toronto the other night. The save percentage from that game only reads .893 because of a goal in stat-pad-time by Steven Lorentz.
Puck drop will be at 5:30 PM local time, instead of the 5:00 PM starts against the two Canadian Original Six teams.
