“It starts with the coaches. Everybody. You’re never going to win if you have four or five guys going, and it starts at the top. Our leaders can be better.” — Leon Draisaitl.
CALGARY — The cautionary tale goes something like this: for the past two seasons, voices around the National Hockey League have assured us around this time that the Edmonton Oilers didn’t have what it was going to take to play for a Stanley Cup.
The goaltending, the defence, the depth scoring… None of it could weather the burdens of a four-round run, the experts said.
Then Edmonton played for the Stanley Cup. Twice.
Well, here we are again, old friend.
Edmonton lost 4-3 to the Calgary Flames on Wednesday to close out their schedule before the Olympic break, dragging a three-game losing streak into their rest and an overall game that is about as sound as a three-legged chair.
Edmonton hits the Olympic break on pace for 90 points. Last spring, the lowest wild-card team in the West had 96 points.
“We’re a different team. We’re not the same team,” said an exasperated Leon Draisaitl, “We’re not as good (as last season) right now. We’re not even close. We need to understand that.
“It’s time,” he said. “There is a break now, but when we come back, we have to get going.”
Where do the changes start?
“It starts with the coaches,” he said. “Everybody. You’re never going to win if you have four or five guys going, and it starts at the top. Our leaders can be better.
“We’ll take the break and regroup.”
Edmonton’s leaky penalty kill — which allowed goals on five consecutive kills over the last three games — surrendered two more against the 26th-best power play in the league Wednesday.
Goalie Tristan Jarry’s game was only average, allowing four goals on 25 shots. But after having called out his team’s defensive play after his last start, in stark contrast, he fully owned this loss.
“I could have made some more saves,” he said. “Ultimately, if I can keep that game at two (goals against), we come out with a better outcome. I could have played better at the start, and that will be something (to fix) moving forward.”
Is it difficult to find his game behind a team that is lurching about in search of a defensive posture that has been lost for much of the season?
“No,” said Jarry, who has clearly found the mirror — or had one handed to him — after his last post-game scrum. “It starts with me. I can be more accountable, and I can play better.
“If I play better and stand in there strong for these guys, we’ll have some better outcomes. It starts with me, and I have to be better moving forward.”
So, between Draisaitl calling out the coaches and Jarry calling out himself, the Oilers are saying the right things.
Now, about actually doing the right things.
“(We’re) just giving up too many goals,” said Draisaitl, who scored twice to move past Mark Messier and within seven points of Jari Kurri for third place on the Oilers’ all-time scoring list. “Can’t defend. Penalty kill is not great. There are many things that are part of it. Just not good enough.
“This league is too hard to lollygag through games trying to get winning streaks going. You need everybody.”
What does Draisaitl think of the team’s goaltending?
“It goes hand in hand,” said Draisaitl, named Tuesday as Germany’s flag-bearer at the Winter Olympics. “We’ve got to defend better, make it easier on (Jarry), and then I’m sure he can be a little bit better too. It’s a two-way street, but it starts with us in front of him, and then the game becomes a little bit easier for him.
“But,” he added, “there are saves that our goalies need to make at some point.”
Out in the hallway, head coach Kris Knoblauch refused to blame Jarry for any of the goals, and reminded that the penalty kill had been much better for a long stretch earlier in the season.
But his team’s overall defensive game? There’s no positive spin here.
“Yeah, looks like we need a little break right now,” he began. “The coaches have a long time to really evaluate what we want to do. We’ve got a little mini-training camp coming back (after the break), where we’ve got about a week to focus on things that we need to get better at, or any changes that we need to make.”
A team that’s been to consecutive Cups, and played the commensurate amount of high-pressure hockey against top teams along the way, is 58 games into its season — and it requires a “mini-training camp” to figure out how to kill a penalty?
To keep the opposition south of four goals against?
“The defensive structure is the mentality of trying to outscore the opposition,” explained Knoblauch, far less convincingly than Draisaitl had. “We’ve got some really good offensive players, but we’ve got to be a little more cognizant of how we play.”
How about a lot more cognizant?
It’s not falling into place in Edmonton this time around.
The break could not come at a better time.
OIL SPILLS — Draisaitl becomes the second European-born player to reach the 80-point plateau for eight consecutive seasons, following Jari Kurri (nine) … Bouchard had three assists and has 63 points in 58 games. He leads the NHL defenceman scoring race by a point over Zach Werenski.
