Sometimes you just don’t get what you might deserve.
But most times, you get what you earn.
Reeling after a 7-2 loss the night before in Dallas, the Edmonton Oilers delivered a dominant, low-event, responsible game at St. Louis Friday night. They controlled the game for most of 50 minutes, built a 2-0 lead, and then….
They went home as OT losers.
“It's really a shame,” said Kasperi Kapanen, who opened the scoring against his old team on the road in St. Louis. “I think throughout the whole game, we were playing pretty well. Teams are going to have their push if we're leading, and we just need to learn how to play with the lead.
“Now we just hope that the extra point that we lost today is not going to come back and haunt us later.”
The Blues scored twice in the final 7:38 of regulation, then weathered a Leon Draisaitl goal post in overtime before Robert Thomas found the top corner behind Connor Ingram with just 10 seconds to play in the extra frame. It was a 3-2 win for St. Louis that must feel like found money.
They’ll be salty, these Oilers, as they should be after giving themselves an excellent chance to record a 3-1 road trip. They had this one well in control, outshooting the Blues 34-23 in regulation.
“It could have went much better for us in the first 40 minutes,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “Then in the third period, we had a nice lead, they got their goal, and maybe we got a little nervous and backed in a little bit.
“It's an unfortunate way to finish. It could have been an outstanding end of a road trip, getting three out of the four games. But only getting one point in the last two games is disappointing for us.”
Connor Ingram was excellent in goal, giving the Oilers the calibre of netminding required to win a road game 3-2. If you’re looking for a scapegoat — or a hero – it would be an Oilers offence that couldn’t coax a third goal in regulation past Joel Hofer, undoubtedly the first star in this game.
With the score 2-1 Edmonton, Connor McDavid had Hofer beaten cleanly on a breakaway but rang his shot off the post. It was a sign of Edmonton’s luck on this night — the higher the events in this game, the more it worked against an Oilers team trying to win a quiet, 2-1 game and hop on the plane for home.
But St. Louis simply hung around, and hung around... It’s a metaphor for what the Blues are doing in the Western Conference, as they climb to within five points of the last wild-card berth, with four teams to pass.
Edmonton, meanwhile, accrues five of eight points on a pretty tough trip through Vegas and Colorado, and the back-to-back in Dallas and St. Louis. They were one shot from a resounding success, as six points would have been awesome.
But, they’ll accept the five points and take solace in the fact their overall game was excellent for eight-and-half periods of this late-season roadie.
“This trip has, on the whole, been a positive one,” Kapanen said. “We obviously would have wanted two points today, and the game yesterday (at Dallas) wasn't our best. But certainly (Edmonton’s game) is better than it has been as of late.”
On Friday the 13th, the Oilers are still living some version of a nightmare, still searching for consistency now 67 games into the season.
But there is time to build off of this trip, with Edmonton just two points out of the Pacific Division lead.
They will come home now to a four-game homestand against Nashville, San Jose, Florida and Tampa. There’s a day off between every game, and we’d expect to see Ingram play at least three, if not all four games.
It’s a sour taste when you blow a point like this. But they’ll wake up in Edmonton on Saturday feeling pretty good about their game, and that’s something the Oilers have earned.
“The positive is that we played some pretty good hockey at points,” Knoblauch said of the trip. “The first two games of the road trip, they were really good. Obviously the Dallas game, no. And most of the game tonight was good.
“But not all of it.”
