After finishing their final Eastern Conference road game of the season, the Edmonton Oilers completed their five-game road trip on Saturday afternoon. Their visit to the X̶c̶e̶l̶ ̶E̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶ ̶C̶e̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, to face the Minnesota Wild, wouldn’t be easy though. For one, the Wild have been firing on all cylinders before, including, and after the Wallstedt game. For two, they’ve now added Quinn Hughes to the fold, making them even more lethal.
And on the Oilers’ part, they wouldn’t have goaltender Tristan Jarry available for this one. So, to Calvin Pickard they turn, hoping for the best goaltending he can offer. And in the meantime, backing him up with some run support would be paramount to success in this game.
On this afternoon, neither happened. Pickard wasn’t awful, necessarily, but couldn’t provide elite goaltending to match counterpart Filip Gustavsson at the other end. And the Oilers offence, after managing three against Boston on Thursday, had just two in this game. Edmonton didn’t score at all after the first period, as the Wild locked it down after snagging a 3–2 lead. You’re not gonna beat Minnesota with .889 goaltending, and you’re not gonna beat the Hughes-era Wild with just two goals. The chance was last month, and you missed it.
Oilers lose 5–2.
Yet again, that’s two wins, followed by a loss. The Oilers are 6–2–1 in their last nine, but still can’t get the “Major League” definition of a winning streak. Here’s the game story.
A furious first period indicated this could be a barn-burner
As of late, the Oilers have been pretty good at not falling behind early in games. Sure, things have snowballed on them when a first-period goal occurs. But the first five minutes of a game normally isn’t where the opponent gets on the board.
That logic went out the window when Matt Boldy got the Wild on the board first.
Boldy would add another one later in that period. Although, really, Leon Draisaitl shouldn’t have even been given a single minor, let alone a double-minor, on the play preceding this Wild power play. This goal was just insult to injury.
Andrew Mangiapane seemed to be reading from Vasily Podkolzin’s notebook on this afternoon. His mission from the get-go was to be Mr. “Crash-the-net”, and eventually it paid off. The Oilers got on the board thanks to his sweet deflection of an Evan Bouchard shot here.
A goalmouth scramble let to another goal to tie things up later in the same frame. One thing the Oilers haven’t done nearly enough of over the course of the season is get some greasy, playoff-style goals. Hopefully they finally are remembering how important those will be.
This means a tie score into intermission, right? Right…?
Ryan Hartman got what turned out to be the game-winner with just six seconds left. That was a brutal end to an otherwise high-event first period that saw a total of 30 shots on goal. It didn’t lack in entertainment value, that’s for sure.
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The Wild defence gave up very little the rest of the way
Remember how Wallstedt stonewalled the Oilers last game? Remember how painful that was? How about the whole Wild defence corps doing it, as well as Gustavsson?
After being allowed 14 shots on Gustavsson in the first period, Edmonton would get only 16 more the rest of the game, including a paltry six in the second period. When the Oilers did start managing shots on goal again, Gustavsson was up to the task. A couple of his saves down the stretch were beauties, just to be sure.
True Minnesota Wild hockey has always been to lock a game down when they have a lead entering the second half of a game. It’s why the Wild used to, and might again, have the Oilers’ number. It’s not easy to clamp down on the Edmonton offence, but by golly, Minnesota does it somehow.
This loss doesn’t entirely fall at the feet of Pickard
The default is going to be, for some folks, to look at the simple stats and see that Pickard stopped 32 of 36, posting an .889 save percentage in this one, and assume he wasn’t great. It’s the equivalent of seeing your buddy entering the Muttart Conservatory with a friend who’s into flora, and assuming your buddy is obsessed with flowers. AKA, a book can’t always be judged by its cover, or in this case, stat sheet.
Particularly earlier in the third period, Pickard made multiple tremendous saves to keep it a one-goal game. It was still 3–2 at that point, and the Oilers were still a shot away from tying it. They nearly did, but Gustavsson responded with his own superb save, and caused a jailbreak the other way.
You generally need three goals to win a hockey game. The Wild got to three first, then stymied the Oilers from there on in while forcing Pickard to try and be perfect. He gave his team every bit of a chance to rally, but they just couldn’t get that tying goal. Yes, you’d like him to make one extra save, but at the same time, on this afternoon it ultimately didn’t matter. Because the offence couldn’t offence after Period 1.
What will it take for the Oilers to have a three-game win streak?
At this point, that’s the biggest question the Oilers have to answer. Somehow, despite being just two points out of first place in the Pacific Division, they haven’t won more than two games in a row this season. It’s literally entering curse territory with how long it’s gone on for.
This team has won consecutive games six times this season. Not once have they won a third game in a row. Now, of course, the caveat is they narrowly avoided becoming the first team all season to lose to the road Buffalo Sabres in regulation, instead letting the Vancouver Canucks claim that dubious honour.
As a result, they have had a five-game points streak. But some wins strung together, more than just two at a time, will be imperative to securing the Pacific Division down the road. Especially with a lot of intra-division matchups left to play.
Player perspective
“Obviously tough, but… we gotta learn from it; even me personally, I gotta learn from that, I was out there at the end (of the period).” -Andrew Mangiapane on the Hartman goal at the end of the first period
There’s no place like home for the holidays
The Oilers are back home for the last two contests before the three-day holiday break. Later tonight, they play the Vegas Golden Knights, who lost 6–3 to the Calgary Flames. Those same Flames will be in town on Tuesday night, coincidentally.
After the holiday break, it’ll be Oilers and Flames again. This time, for Hockey Night In Canada, and this time in Cowtown. So, all this week, it’s “Alberta Bound” for the Oilers. Puck drop tonight is 7:00 PM local time.
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