IN DEPTH
Each and every Sunday during the season we dig deeper into Oilers storylines with our long-form features. This week's feature looks back on the year that was.
Winger's hit to defenceman's head in a 1-0 game in the last five seconds of the second period was ill-timed if not ill-conceived
In a season that’s turning into a bad soap opera, Patrick Maroon came clean in the losing team’s bathhouse.
His hit to Los Angeles Kings defenceman Drew Doughty’s head in a 1-0 game in the last five seconds of the middle period Tuesday night was ill-timed if not ill-conceived.
He didn’t mean to strafe Doughty in the head as he got in on the forecheck, but he did and the Kings royally made Maroon and the Oilers pay by scoring three times on the match penalty against what might be the worst penalty-kill in NHL history.
“I’m obviously glad Doughty came back and played,” said the Edmonton Oilers winger after the Kings clobbered them 5-0—the same result by the Winnipeg Jets New Year’s Eve. “But, honestly, I’m a big forward going in to do my job. My elbow didn’t come up, nothing came up, but unfortunately my follow-through hit him in the head.
“I’m not a dirty player. I have so much respect for players in this league, especially him. I play the game hard and I’m just mad they gave me a match and it hurt our PK. I’ll take the onus for that one.”
Doughty, who missed the start of the third because he was undergoing concussion protocol, had glassy eyes and rubbery feet when he left the ice at the end of the second. But, he had a smile on his face as the Kings made the Oilers pay over and over and over again against their PK.
“When stuff like that happens, your team just comes together, scoring three goals on the power play to really shove it up their butts was awesome,” said Doughty.
Doughty didn’t see the Maroon shoulder block, at all.
“I didn’t have the puck, that’s why I was so shocked by it. But I’ve known Maroon for a long time, he’s just trying to finish a hit. I don’t know that he meant to try and hurt me. I forgive him,” said Doughty, who had defence partner Derek Forbort step in to fight Maroon and lose the fight.
“I didn’t have any (concussion) symptoms so I was good to go back out. It takes a little while, a lot of tests. I would have liked to get out there faster but when you get hit in the head it’s pretty important stuff.”
The NHL’s Player Safety Department may also make Maroon pay because he could get be getting a suspension after the hit to Doughty’s head, but that’s later. Right now, the Oilers are reeling.
They’ve lost four in a row after winning four straight to get to .500 before the Christmas break and once again their PK is the gift that keeps on giving. They’ve given up 28 goals in 63 power plays at home, and their success rate is 55.6 percent. The all-time worst is 69.4 percent at home bythe 2008-2009 Toronto Maple Leafs to put the Oilers’ wretched PK at home into perspective.
“It just sucks the life out of us,” said McLellan. “We were OK for two periods. We made a mistake and they scored (Andy Andreoff). The major penalty, it sucked the life out of us. Again, multiple mistakes, things we worked on. Cheating sometimes and leaving early. Not being able to clear a puck when you execute.”
They’re 85 per cent on the road and 55 percent at home, mind boggling.
“We’ve pounded away on a lot of us, especially in the last two weeks. We’ll keep pounding away. I don’t have the answer or we’d have changed it a month ago. Tough question for me to answer,” said the coach.
It’s groundhog day every day for the Oiler PK.
“It’s frustrating to have the same conversation,” said Mark Letestu. “It’s been the story too often. That being said, we didn’t score any goals tonight. It didn’t matter if we let in four or five or 10 on that power play. I’m sick of tipping my hat to goal-tenders.”
This was the second straight shutout at home and fourth at Rogers Place this season—also the first time Connor McDavid has gone three straight games without a point in his NHL career.
“We’ve completely erased the four-game winning streak … I’ve seen it before where a team’s rolling, then a break happens and it almost works against you,” said Milan Lucic. “But that’s just an excuse. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have picked up where we left off because we worked so hard to get back into it.”
E-mail: jmatheson@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @NHLbyMatty
This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. Then the mental flaws kicked in
In many ways, they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.
When the 2017-18 Edmonton Oilers on the second day of 2018 effectively stuck the fork in themselves and booked the fat lady to sing, it wasn’t in a playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings. It wasn’t an unforgettable moment in hockey history that became known as the Miracle On Manchester.
While it was against the Kings, it was only four games after the Christmas break.
Those young Oilers of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe spent that summer back in 1982 having to face the fact that they were a mentally flawed group that had some large lessons to learn.
They’d somehow come to the conclusion that they were God’s gift to the NHL but found out they were nothing but adolescent, front-running, good-time Charlies.
Is this team honestly that much different?
All off-season, this team had been told that they were about to embrace their future as the next great team in the game. The people who set betting lines had them booked into the Stanley Cup final.
This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. It was going to be a special season.
Then the mental flaws kicked in.
The Oilers decided they could throw their sticks on the ice and win. They were blind to the fact that despite the only thing they’d ever won was a single playoff series, they were going to face the same kind of treatment as the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.
With 20-year-old captain Conner McDavid — the winner of the Art Ross, Hart and Ted Lindsay trophies, the 103-points in the standings and 13 playoff games ending in a Game 7 loss in Anaheim — the Edmonton Oilers had become a trophy themselves.
Through November, this team would occasionally come together and win all the little battles and races to the puck and register a particularly impressive victory over a top team, and then follow up with a no-show stinker.
Finally, they made it to December where, playing on the edge of the cliff, they became the Oilers they were supposed to be.
Right through to Christmas, they showed the NHL that they could be the team everybody expected them to be. They won their final four games going into the holiday break. They’d won four straight games, seven of their past 10, and 10 of their previous 15. They’d set a goal of reaching .500 (17-17-2) by the break. They did it. Suddenly, the playoffs looked remarkably reachable. When they read their press clippings (guilt, again), they were told they were back.
But they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.
They didn’t learn a damn thing.
They came back self-satisfied and blissfully ignorant that all their effort in December wasn’t the end game but just a chance to get back in the game.
And so here we are four losses later — with 18 goals against in those games and back-to-back 5-0 losses in must-win games — and this isn’t the summer of 1982.
They’re 17-20-3, and the computerized Sports Club Stats site rates their playoff chances at 1.1 per cent.
In the summer of 1982, the players could go hide. These guys have 42 games left to play, including Thursday’s final game of the four-game home stand prior to a five-game road trip and a six-day break.
And suddenly, it has to hit home.
The rest of this season, because of expectations, is going to feel longer than any of the seasons during the decade of darkness — the record equaling 10 straight seasons out of the playoffs.
And while, to some extent, the Blame Game has already been well under way, now it gets dialled up.
Fire the general manager! Fire the coach!
Those are the last things that should happen here.
This is, first and foremost, on the players.
You fire the GM and fire the coach, you give them the excuse that it wasn’t their fault.
Yes, Peter Chiarelli made a mess of this season as general manager. The guy who made all the right moves the previous two years made all the wrong ones this year.
And, yes, Todd McLellan and staff are currently coaching the worst penalty-kill unit in the entire history of the NHL and can’t tell you what’s wrong with it. Mostly, it’s Chiarelli providing the wrong people to play on it, perhaps. But to go a whole calendar year (other than the playoffs, when it was just fine) is on their head, too. Nobody gets into the playoffs with a penalty-killing unit that pathetic.
But Chiarelli is a good general manager. McLellan is a good coach. Everybody involved has had success before.
Don’t fire anybody. They’re in it together. Let them suffer through the rest of the season, figure everything out, and start all over again next year.
E-mail: tjones@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @byterryjones
Kings 5, Oilers 0
“The penalty kill sucked the life out of us.”
So spake Todd McLellan in the aftermath of a second consecutive 5-0 beatdown of his Edmonton Oilers right on their home ice, this one by Los Angeles Kings. He could have saved himself the last five words and his statement would be just as accurate.
Edmonton’s deplorable PK was lit up for three goals on the same five-minute powerplay early in the third period after Patrick Maroon’s match penalty for a hit to the head of Drew Doughty. Just like that, a tense, taut 1-0 hockey game was ancient history and yet another visiting team was laughing their way to the final buzzer.
An oddity of NHL record-keeping is that after each goal on a major penalty a “new” powerplay opportunity is created, meaning the Kings officially went 3-for-4 during that major, but by my math they went 3-for-1. However you slice it, nine Oilers have skated to the penalty box during the first three games of a disastrous home stand, and the opposition have cashed seven goals while they were in there. Fully half of the 14 goals the Oilers have allowed in those three games. A home PK that was already a laughing stock before this latest stretch has somehow reached a whole new level of incompetence. The Oilers have now allowed 28 powerplay goals on their home ice, ELEVEN more than even the worst of the other 30 teams in the NHL.
Oilers’ fans can save a little vitriol for the other not-so-special team, a powerplay unit that generated just 2 shots and 1 Grade B scoring chance (log and summary) in three opportunities. Doesn’t compare at all well to an opponent that generated 11 shots, 9 scoring chances, and oh yeah, 3 goals in their own three opportunities (granted, over 9 minutes rather than 6).
It was the eighth time in 21 home games that the Oilers have lost by three or more goals, with four of those drubbings being shutouts of 4-0 (Detroit, Nashville) or 5-0 (Winnipeg, now Los Angeles in consecutive games). This one was not quite so putrid as Sunday’s beatdown, with the Oilers giving as good as they got for the first 34 minutes, but once things started going south there was no stopping the collapse.
Postgame podcast
After Edmonton’s latest 5-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings, it’s clear this team is out of the playoff race. They can’t kill a penalty. Their top power play unit is gruesome. The coach has run out of answers. It’s all she wrote, so we can all relax now. David Staples and Bruce McCurdy of the Cult of Hockey dig in.
Player grades
#2 Andrej Sekera, 4. Is part of the problem on a first powerplay unit that can’t find the net with a flashlight and a GPS. Looked OK at times at even strength , other than being part of the sequence of pain on Andy Andreoff’s goal — the second game in a row that an opposing player had returned to the line-up from the pressbox to both open the scoring and earn the game-winning goal in the process. I expected Sekera to struggle for a while after his return from a long absence, but did not foresee what is now an ugly -7 after just 6 games.
#4 Kris Russell, 4. Reunited with Sekera. Oilers dominated the flow of play with the veteran pairing on the ice, but it was Russell’s reckless pinch during a fourth-line shift (read: “little upside”) that led directly to the 2-on-1 jailbreak that resulted in the oh-so-critical opening goal, deep in the second frame. A surprising and disappointing mistake from a player renowned for his patience. Also was part of the problem on the second Kings’ powerplay goal. Did have one splendid play where he decked the dastardly Dustin Brown with a good hit despite having lost his stick earlier in the sequence.
#6 Adam Larsson, 4. I’m not at all convinced he’s over the back woes that sidelined him last month. There was one particularly dicey sequence in this game where he went down hard and seemed out of whack for quite a few nervous seconds thereafter. He was OK-ish at even strength, but cast a mammoth screen on Talbot on Marian Gaborik’s 2-0 goal early in the long powerplay.
#13 Mike Cammalleri, 5. Had 3 shots on net, all of them dangerous, but was unable to solve his old teammate Jonathan Quick. Did waste one chance when he followed Lucic into the corner instead of anticipating his linemate’s dangerous centring pass that wound up going to nobody.
#16 Jujhar Khaira, 4. His defining moment came on the 3-0 goal, when he first failed to clear the puck, then over-committed to the strong side leaving Anze Kopitar unchecked behind him, then scrambled to recover only to deflect Kopitar’s centring pass right into his own goal crease for an easy tap-in by Dustin Brown. Some OK moments at evens, but 0 shots on goal. Was pokechecked by Quick on his best chance.
#18 Ryan Strome, 2. Unnoticeable by eye, and invisible by stat. 0 shots, 0 contributions to scoring chances (2 against) , 0/3=0% on the faceoff dot, and clobbered by flow of play measures (the Oilers had 3 shots for, 8 against during his 10 even strength minutes). Also accomplished nothing on the powerplay. In my pages of notes from the game, the number 18 never got recorded once.
#19 Patrick Maroon, 3. Hoo boy, how to rate this one? He was enjoying a fairly strong game, contributing to 6 Oilers scoring chances on by far Edmonton’s most dangerous line with McDavid and Puljujarvi. Nearly scored on a nifty pokecheck and created havoc a few other times. But … took the devastating match penalty that effectively ended this game when his shoulder caught Drew Doughty in the face, this on a play that the LA star had never touched the puck. A trifle unlucky in the outcome — this play happened fast, and the puck was in the neighbourhood — but the onus is on the player not to make contact with the head and the fact it was technically interference on an unsuspecting opponent sealed the deal. I’m not going to level him with the dreaded “1” as I normally might after a match penalty, but at the end of the day he did more to hurt his team than help it.
#25 Darnell Nurse, 5. Edmonton’s best defenceman (again) to my eye, he played staunch defence and made peripheral contributions on the attack. Played a team-high 21:03 TOI. One of the bright lights of this sorry season.
#27 Milan Lucic, 4. Had 4 shot attempts and 4 hits, but was unable to cash his best chance when he followed up a great RNH rush but slid the puck wide.
#29 Leon Draisaitl, 3. Contributed to 2 Oilers scoring chances in all situations, and to 7 Kings chances. Ugh. Did have 4 shots on net to lead the Oil and tested Quick with a couple of them. 9/11=82% on the dot. Did not get a lot of help from his wingers in this one; a key weakness of the Three Centres Model is that Peter Chairelli didn’t provide his coaching staff with enough depth of proven wingers to staff three scoring lines.
#33 Cam Talbot, 4. Just like Sunday, by no means is a 5-0 loss on the goaltender, he made some saves and a case could be made that he had little chance on this goal or that. Was saved by his goal post twice on the same shot (by Doughty) early in the game’s first powerplay, but thereafter watched the man at the far end get the lion’s share of the breaks. But was outplayed by his counterpart again, a frequent occurrence this season. Has now allowed 18 goals in 4 games since Christmas. 33 shots, 28 saves, .848 save percentage.
#44 Zack Kassian, 3. Edmonton’s fourth line is getting crushed these days, with Kassian a primary culprit. He posted his third game of -2 since Christmas, as he was on the ice for both even strength goals in this one. Was also torched for a powerplay goal, making contributing mistakes on 2 of the 3. Did manage 3 shots on net, one of them a semi-dangerous wrap-around but added flat nothing physically (o hits and about as much intensity). Seems curiously disengaged, with one example that caught my eye being the time that Maroon got involved in verbal warfare from the Edmonton bench while Kassian sitting right next to him stared blankly into space. Hard to imagine the Kassian of a year ago doing anything but enthusiastically joining in to the discourse. Just a tiny thing, may mean nothing in your world but it landed wrong in mine.
#55 Mark Letestu, 3. Lost battles on the first and fourth Kings goals and contributed nothing on the attack despite over 3 minutes on the powerplay. 0 shots on goal. Did manage a respectable 8/13=62% on the dot.
#77 Oscar Klefbom, 4. Had issues on the last two Kings goals, even as one could safely argue the game was done at that point. Did have some OK moments in the attack at even strength, not so much on the (second-unit) powerplay.
#88 Brandon Davidson, 4. Got off to a dicey start when he took an iffy interference penalty on his first shift, but against the odds the PKers (and Talbot’s left post) had his back. Did some strong defending in and around the cage, and moved the puck decently. Unlucky on the last powerplay goal when his shot block found a stanchion in the glass and bounced straight to Adrian Kempe for the uncontested tap-in. Got more than unlucky on the game’s final goal when Tanner Pearson wrenched Davidson’s stick from his grasp, leaving him without his twig at the crucial moment that the puck was in reach on its way up ice. Aggravating missed call, especially in light of that earlier interference call the other way, but the die was already cast, be it 4-0 or 5-0 it didn’t make a lot of difference.
#91 Drake Caggiula, 3. Of the 7 forwards and 6 defenders who did the bulk of the penalty killing, he was the only one not to be burned for a goal against, as three completely different units of four got lit up once each. But he made a key mistake on the even-strength goal that opened the scoring, not reading Russell’s pinch and not being able to overtake Andreoff on the back check. Made 4 mistakes on scoring chances in all situations while chipping in on just 1 chance at the good end. 0 hits and not a lot of impact on the game.
#93 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, 5. One of Edmonton’s most inspired players, he skated hard, drawing two penalties including one on a terrific rink-length dash, setting up a great chance for Lucic after being fouled. Did allow a cross-seam pass on the one of the powerplay goals. With Maroon out of the game he took a few shifts on McDavid’s line — the first in memory — in the third, alas the score was 4-0 by then and the life was gone from the game. Rang a wicked shot off the inside of the goal post in the third, but Quick’s luck being what it has seemingly always been against the Oilers, it ricocheted right across the goal mouth and out the other side. 8/13=62% on the dot.
#97 Connor McDavid, 7. Played like a man possessed for the first two periods, flying around the ice and creating all sorts of headaches for the Kings. On one shift he repeatedly circled through opposition territory, setting up Sekera for a near miss, then Puljujarvi for a pair of dangerous shots, before finally driving the puck to the goal mouth himself. Lost a puck battle on the late Kings goal that finalized the score. 3/9=33% in the faceoff circle. Chipped in on 8 Oilers chances overall, though just 1 on the PP. Seemed like McDavid against the world at times, and the world eventually won the day. Has now gone pointless in three consecutive games for the first time in his NHL career.
#98 Jesse Puljujarvi, 6. Another promising game from the teenager, who led the Oilers with 8 shot attempts. His best chance was a critical miss on an open net, catching the crossbar very late in the second with the Oilers trailing 1-0. Seconds later Maroon took his penalty and by the time the dust settled, a potential 1-1 tie was instead an insurmountable 4-0 deficit. Is becoming more comfortable playing with McDavid and gauging the phenom’s speed, and it can be seen in subtle details like his perfect timing attacking the blueline just as McDavid crossed it with the puck in full flight.
Recently at the Cult of Hockey
STAPLES: Oilers mid-season review
Part 1: Special teams | Part 2: Offensive game | Part 3: Defensive game
LEAVINS: Spinning the Oilers’ wheel of decisions
McCURDY: McLellan and the Oilers PK
STAPLES: Player grades in 5-0 beatdown by Jets
Follow me on Twitter @BruceMcCurdy
