Mark Spector made the last stop on his kick-off tour in Edmonton to watch the Oilers display some new-found grit in a loss to the Flames.
EDMONTON - Game 1 of a National Hockey League season is all about seeing what you came to see. It is a time when the two points would be nice, but progress still counts for something.
At the Air Canada Centre on Thursday that meant toughness and effort, and the Maple Leafs delivered every bit of that an overtime loss to Montreal. At the Igloo in Pittsburgh, where a banner was hung on Friday, the Penguins are all about results - which they got in a solid win over the Rangers.
And as our tour wrapped up Sunday at Rexall Place in Edmonton, you knew the fans wanted something even simpler. They wanted their money's worth from a team that, on so many nights last season, played as if the game - the uniform - really wasn't that important to them.
Oiler fans want more compete. They want a line-up that isn't so easy to play against, particularly when Calgary comes in.
And despite the fact goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin all but ruined the night when the old pro made a peewee mistake to gift wrap the game-winning goal for Calgary, there were still enough positives to dilute the sour taste left in the mouths of Oiler fans after heartbreaking a 4-3 loss.
"We'll frame this the right way," defenceman Steve Staios said. "And we'll stick together. Win as a team, lose as a team."
The bad news was, the key addition to this team over the summer let in four goals on just 21 shots. The first shot Khabibulin saw as an Oiler sailed over his shoulder from in close, and the last of the game was simply a long dump-in that he had several seconds to deal with.
He didn't, and David Moss tapped the winner into an open net with 49 seconds to play, after Edmonton had fought back from a 3-1 deficit.
"I don't feel very good right now," Khabibulin said.
"I didn't like any one of the goals that went in tonight," countered head coach Pat Quinn.
But that's enough about the bad news.
The good news, from an Edmonton perspective, was that the Oilers played with purpose, grit and a goodly share of toughness. They outshot the Flames 34-21 and out-chanced them at least two to one on the night.
In short, they played like Pat Quinn said they would play, much sooner than most of that that could be accomplished.
"We were tenacious. We went to the net well," Quinn said, when asked what he liked the most about his first game behind the Oilers bench. "We got logged into our own zone a little bit too often. I think the panic level, for our defence especially, is probably a little low right now."
He will be careful, however, not to let a feeling set in that "close but no cigar" is good enough.
"Did we do some good things? Sure," Quinn said. "But we lost the hockey game."
The Battle of Alberta has evolved into a pair of teams at polar opposite points in their development.
Being 2-0 in the young season is nice for Calgary, but really, what this club does between now and April will only be pertinent if for some reason the wheels fall off. Which we can not see happening to the Flames.
Calgary has become a good team that has lost in the first round for four straight post-seasons, so new coach Brent Sutter is not tasked with winning in October. That's expected.
His work will be judged come springtime.
Edmonton can only wish they had Calgary's problems. The Oilers haven't made the playoffs for four years, and hit their nadir last season.
Somehow a proud organization found itself with a roster tainted with entitlement and lack of care and/or effort. They became too small and far too easy an opponent, two traits that Quinn has vowed to battle.
Here, they want Dustin Penner to play like a 6-foot-4 winger. He did so and more on Saturday night, showing unseen jump in his stride while scoring a goal and adding an assist.
They want players to finish some checks for a change in Edmonton, and the Oilers did that in spades in their opener. They lost, but Calgary went home knowing they had been in a hockey game, which was more than happened on a lot of nights last season.
"Can we do this every night? I'm not sure," Staios said. "Honestly, I'm not sure. But we did it in Game 1, and we'll try to do it again [Tuesday] night. That's all I can control."
For one night, that was enough in Edmonton.
But that sentiment has a very short shelf life.
