EDMONTON — Now they’re just showin’ off.
The Edmonton Oilers got one empty net goal from its Top 6, zero points from its top defensive pairing, and Leon Draisaitl still isn’t even playing.
Still, Edmonton beat Seattle 3-0 —the Oilers’ first four-game winning streak of the season — on goals by depth wingers Max Jones and Kasperi Kapanen, and a shutout by a guy who started the season in Bakersfield, the emerging Connor Ingram.
A team that stumbled and bumbled through the first 65 games of the season suddenly has a defensive posture, has eliminated the risk from its game, and is getting top-tier goaltending. It’s the ultimate flick of the switch — from derelict to deadly, from frazzled to focused.
“A lot of pucks don’t even get to me anymore,” marvelled Ingram, who stopped all 27 shots on his 29th birthday — the first Oilers goalie ever to post a shutout on his birthday. “And when they do, there’s bodies and guys around helping out. We put an emphasis on coming back, and now it’s just about doing it.
“I’m not an X’s and O’s guy, but for me it seems like it’s going well.”
Ya think?
Sure, it must be said that Seattle has a popgun offence, and the Oilers have handled them efficiently with seven straight wins here at Rogers Place. But there is a certain calm to Edmonton’s game these days, and a team that has been known to be power-play merchants just won their fourth straight game without a single PPG along the way.
“Our game isn’t sexy right now. It’s not fancy,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “It’s just a lot of little things, and that’s usually the difference between winning and losing. We have six D and 12 forwards each night who are doing it.”
While teams like Winnipeg and Ottawa are playing life and death hockey just to qualify for the post-season, out here in the Pillow Fight Pacific, there’s never been any real doubt that the Oilers would qualify to defend their back-to-back Western Conference titles.
But when you win six playoff rounds in two seasons, you know what it’s supposed to look like when April 15th rolls around. And on about March 15, Edmonton’s game didn’t look anything like that.
So they had a team meeting, as most teams would, and instead of making any grand proclamations, the Oilers players told each other to simply improve their game incrementally.
“I feel like ever since we had the conversation about everyone stepping up a bit, it seems like everyone’s kind of just doing a little bit extra out there,” said Jones, whose goal just 5:28 into the game stood up as the GWG. “The start of the game, it was pretty evident. You saw how fast it was and how fast we were playing. Just playing simple and it carried out through the whole game.”
Jones’ goal was no masterpiece, though Italy’s national soccer team could have used a header like the one he provided when Jake Walman’s shot smoked his visor and ended up in the net.
“I think it hit my elbow and then my face,” Jones said. “They don’t ask how…Well, I guess you (media) guys do. I think it was literally off my face.”
Here in Edmonton, the big boys in the Top 6 are never an issue.
The power play leads the league every season. Connor McDavid and Draisaitl are in the Art Ross and Maurice “Rocket” Richard races every year. Zach Hyman is a lock for 35-50 goals, Nugent-Hopkins is money, and Bouchard is a Top 3 scorer among NHL defencemen over the past four seasons.
What they’ve constantly been searching for is an identity among their Bottom 6 forwards, a D-corps that can hunker down and defend a lead, and goaltending.
Suddenly, all of those qualities have emerged.
“Teams are going to have their pushes. They’re going to have their chances,” said Kapanen, who has matured into an excellent third-line penalty killer with some offensive jam, great speed and good size. “But when you have a goalie like Ingo, who is playing extremely well right now, that’s what it looks like. It was a good effort.”
It’s a funny sport.
The more high-end offensive players a team has, the fewer chances are required to create the requisite three or four goals needed to win. So it becomes about what you give up, and that’s the part of the game that’s always been the issue here in Edmonton.
Frankly, they’ve never been very good at playing boring hockey, these Oilers. But when they do, it tends to work for them.
“We still have amazing players that can play with the puck and make plays, but the general idea is to simplify,” Kapanen explained. “We’re obviously missing Leo (Draisaitl) out there, but it seems to be working right now. So we need to keep doing that.”
