EDMONTON — You can label it an excuse, or you can call it a reason. But we’re not talking about whether the Edmonton Oilers won on Tuesday night, which they did not, or which was the better team.
Columbus was — and is — the better hockey team, as displayed by their stunning 18-5-4 record, and a convincing 3-1 victory Tuesday night in Edmonton. And you couldn’t find an Oilers player who complained about what has become a ridiculous schedule, despite the fact it was Edmonton’s 18th game in 32 days.
The fans? They should complain in the aftermath of a waning Oilers effort, however.
We’re not talking about the record. We’re talking about the product.
“It hasn’t been pretty hockey. It’s just a function of the games in the numbers of days, the last 40-45 days,” Edmonton general manager Peter Chiarelli said matter-of-factly Tuesday morning. “It’s been a little mind-numbing. It’s probably a little mind-numbing to watch too.
“This grind hasn’t been really entertaining.”
Now, Chiarelli is a smart, eloquent man. He is cognizant of who his employers are, and quite aware of the fact he makes a living in the entertainment business.
Yet there he was, a well-spoken professional unable to think of any other way to describe his team’s recent run of games as anything other than “not … really entertaining.”
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So we asked his head coach, Todd McLellan, what he sees in a team as the travel and games played mounts, with little or no time for a decent practice.
“With the lack of practice time, details slip. Skill level slips a bit. Even fitness level slips a little bit,” McLellan said, again, before Tuesday’s game was played. “Does it transfer over to the level of play? We haven’t played extremely well, and we haven’t been very entertaining the last few nights.”
The Oilers should be an entertaining team, with good speed and a pretty decent level of skill, and have been on many nights this season. As their schedule has worn on, however, the Oilers have scored 11 goals in their past six home games combined.
Not even two a night, with the league’s leading scorer in the lineup.
Connor McDavid was sluggish on Tuesday. As happens with every player, his game failed to survive the final game of a long stretch that will see the Oilers begin their first three-day break … wait for it … of the entire season starting today.
Columbus, meanwhile has now played 27 games to the Oilers 32. And we repeat, they are a better team at this time, with stellar goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky and timely goal scoring from Sam Gagner, who had another Tuesday.
That five-game edge puts Edmonton about 10 days ahead of Columbus on the season, a campaign that is only two months old.
“Everyone is in good shape here. I don’t think anyone is tired,” countered Edmonton winger Pat Maroon. “Guys are just turning pucks over, mentally. We’ve just got to clean some things up.”
That’s where a practice would help, if there were time for any.
On Tuesday, Edmonton scored first, then slowly ran out of gas. The Blue Jackets methodically tied the game after two periods, and walked away with it in the third. McLellan, playing the piano as fast as he could, changed his lines like a line cook moves plates.
He was looking for “combinations of three, or even two (players) who had a little pop, a little juice left,” the coach explained.
“Columbus was the better team by the end of the night,” he added. “By the time the game was over, they took it over.”
And it’s not only Edmonton. Winnipeg and Calgary have it just as bad, and somehow the Flames have saved their best for this tough stretch.
Sure, these players make millions. And they fly on charter planes with great meals and copious perks. And summers off.
What they are not, however, are machines. In a game that requires a player to be both physically and mentally alert, when the mind tires the body quickly follows.
I watch this team every night. I can see the dexterity, the mental alertness, the ability to up all those various “levels” they talk about late in a game, all waning these past 10 days or so.
And who, you ask, pays the ultimate price for a league that started five days later because of the World Cup of Hockey, and will squeeze a mandatory five-day break in after the New Year?
The fans, of course, are the big losers.
Fans who pay outrageous prices to see teams that even their coaches and GMs admit do not entertain on a nightly basis.
And those coaches and GMs? They get in for free.
