Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Pat Quinn is still trying to rebuild the Oilers in his image.

EDMONTON — By now, there are no secrets left for Pat Quinn.

He has coached across our country, from the Vancouver Canucks to the Toronto Maple Leafs, to the World Junior team, and now the Edmonton Oilers.

We know he was one of the toughest son-of-a-guns ever to man a blue-line back in his playing days, and if you are old enough, you’ll recall the time he laid out Bobby Orr. We’d never heard anyone do that before.

You know he likes hard-nosed hockey and accountability, refusing to pull goalie Jeff Deslauriers when he let in four goals on nine shots Wednesday night because, “I didn’t want to give us an excuse. I wanted the onus to be on our players to dig themselves out.”

So what exactly is Quinn doing in Edmonton these days, with a team that’s softer than Taylor Swift single on a lot of nights?

“I still think the game is won in the pits,” Quinn said on Wednesday. But he inherited a team that couldn’t find the pits with a compass and a backhoe.

Edmonton was far, far too easy to play against on most nights last season. So it was no surprise that he opened the season with a gritty player on each of four lines, and Sheldon Souray and Steve Staios as his only two defenceman who have proven to have that element in their game.

Well, all four of those players — Staios, Souray, Ryan Stone and J.F. Jacques — were soon injured. And what was left of the Oilers roster played itself out before a head coach who, at times this season, has barely been able to contain his contempt for the way his team plays the game he loves.

“You need players who can play on the outside, sure, but eventually it comes down to, if you want to win you have to (get your hands dirty),” he said. “You have to do it with whatever skills you have. The guys who play on the outside … eventually they have to take their game inside. That’s where you have to use your skill level to compete.”

On Wednesday he benched defenceman Tom Gilbert, who was culpable on the first two goals of a game the Oilers would come back to win 6-4 over Colorado Wednesday night. “Sitting on the pine a little bit might get a good result,” he spat.

With so many of the same kind of player signed to NHL contracts by Oilers management, it was impossible for Quinn to walk into his new gig, snap his fingers, and have a team built in his image. And when they had a relatively healthy roster early in the season, Edmonton had marginal success. There was some sandpaper inside Rexall Place for the first time in years.

But injuries have given Quinn a long look at how one-dimensional skill players like Sam Gagner, Andrew Cogliano, Patrick O’Sullivan, Robert Nilsson (minus-12 in 12 games), Ales Hemsky and Gilbert play the game. Considering what we know about Quinn, it has to be killing him inside.

“If we’ve drafted players here because they have shown they can play on the outside, then we have to develop their game. It’s a mindset,” he said. “What concerns me is our defensive game. We let people too easily to the front of our net.”

Colorado exploited Edmonton’s soft play down low for their first two goals Wednesday. Quinn has some skill here, but not enough guys who combine it with a physical or smart defensive game.

“Stevie Yzerman eventually learned to play the game the right way. He went into the Hall of Fame the other day, but more importantly, he played on some winning teams. And he was a big part of those winning teams because he learned to play the game the right way.”

“We just had a road trip where we were pretty good a lot of the time. But that’s not enough to win.”

There has never been anything pretty about the big Irishman, and right now, that’s the way his team wants to play the game. We can’t say how long the Oilers will be considered a soft opponent, or how long they’ll deserve that tag.

But we know this for sure: It can’t stay that way here for long.

Not with this coach behind the bench.