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The buzz word in hockey today is “mature.” As in, every team that weathers a storm or plays a solid third period talks about how “mature” a game they played.
So what do we call the game the Oilers laid down in Dallas Wednesday night, if not immature?
A veteran Oilers team folded up like a cheap tent in the second period of a 1-0 game, allowing four goals in a 5:48 span en route to a 5-0 loss.
“They get that second one and we completely go off script. That’s just not our game,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, after the Oilers’ third shutout effort of the season. “That’s not how you’re going to win at any point in the season, especially with nine games left against one of the best teams in the league.”
And the worst thing? Edmonton’s best players were their worst players, particularly assistant captains Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse.
The game was only two minutes old when Draisaitl dangled around his own zone with the puck before carelessly coughing it up in the neutral zone. Two passes later it was in the Oilers’ net, and in an excellent first period where Edmonton had 16 shots on goal and numerous good chances, they trailed 1-0 at the intermission because one of their leaders completely abandoned any attention to detail on his first shift of the night.
As for Nurse, he took a selfish misconduct in the first period grousing about a penalty. Then in the second it was Nurse’s egregious pinch that led to the four-on-one that produced the Stars’ 3-0 goal, the real back-breaker that led to Dallas’ second period onslaught.
They were the kind of plays that young, inexperienced players make. Not your leaders.
“That stretch of five, 10 minutes of just giving the puck back to them and letting their momentum just kind of take complete control the game,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We have to be able to stop that. We’re a mature enough team to be able to stop that. We know we have it in here. Wasn’t there tonight.”
One of hockey’s most well-worn clichés is that your best players have to be your best players to win. When your best players are your worst players, you’re going to lose and lose bad, as Edmonton did on an embarrassing night in Texas Wednesday.
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“We’ve really got to do a better job of managing our game,” said defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “Shifts after goals have to be a lot better, where you just play simple and get in on the forecheck, but we weren’t able to do that tonight.”
So, is there a bright side to a beat down like this one?
Of course there is.
An irresponsible game like this so close to the playoffs, and the requisite paddling that ensues, is the perfect reminder of how a team has to play when the playoffs begin later this month. It’s an excellent refresher on intellectual intensity, attention to detail, and the shift-by-shift consistency that is required to beat excellent teams in important games.
And all of these lessons come on a night where the two points would have been nice, but really, honing your game is the most important thing in these last eight dress rehearsals for what both of these teams feel could be a run all the way to the Stanley Cup.
A Vancouver win at Arizona leaves Edmonton seven points back of the long-gone Canucks. Now, they’ll ready their game for the Vegas Golden Knights, most likely, in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“I think it’s good timing right now, to really go through it and see it and learn from it,” Ekholm said. “We don’t have that many games left here before it starts real. There’s time to take some time to learn, because I thought tonight they played a game that we’re gonna see in the playoffs and we’re gonna have to manage that a lot better.”
They’ll write this test again in the playoffs, and hope to grade out much, much better.
“That’s where you got to stay a little bit more stubborn,” Ekholm said. “Defensively, you can’t unravel when you go down two or three goals. You just kind of stay the course, and you never know. If (the deficit is) two or three goals going into the last period, you can always come back. But when it gets down to four or five it’s really tough.”
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