The Edmonton Oilers continue to leave dozens of points on the table simply by losing too many one-goal games.
If you are the Edmonton Oilers and sitting near the bottom of the National Hockey League standings, you have to be constantly wondering what on earth do you have to do to earn points these days.
The simple answer might be to score one more goal, or make one more save.
Unfortunately, the recent stretch of games have been anything but simple.
But the reality is, the Oilers are actually not that far off from being a much better team.
What's killing their chances at points are games decided by a goal
Edmonton has played 47 games and amazingly, almost half have been decided by a single goal. 23 of those games in which the Oilers have been a participant, have gone down to the wire.
Of those 23 one-goal games, they have won seven, and lost nine in regulation and lost another eight in overtime or a shootout.
If you do the math on those 23 games, if even half of them ended in wins and or at least, one-point efforts, we’d be talking a different story here. You can’t ignore those potential 46 points they’ve left on the table.
In fact, even if they were fortunate enough to skate away with an even .500 record during those games (23 point points), they would be in the midst of a Western playoff battle in and around the seventh playoff seed.
Nevertheless, for Oilers management and fans, it’s about looking towards next year. The lower they finish this year, the better in terms of draft seeding.
However, as Edmonton becomes a team on the rise, they’ll have to start finding a way to win those close games.
No time like the present to see what that feels like.
