Edmonton Oilers Gameday Reviews: Jets Continue Dominance Over Toothless Oilers

This is your TL/DR (too long, didn’t read) summary post where excerpts are taken from the best of the best when it comes to Edmonton Oilers blogs. BLH gives you his two cents on the latest posts being published in the Oilogosphere! Including those from Lowetide.ca, The Athletic, Oilersnation, The Cult of Hockey, Copper N Blue, Oil on Whyte, and more!

The latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation comes from all of the internet’s top sites like Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, and TSN just to name a few!

If you’re short on time but want to keep up with the day’s Oilers news, you’ve come to the right place!

Give us a follow on the socials!

Cult of Hockey

Player grades: Edmonton Oilers vs Winnipeg Jets turns into one big Sequence of Pain

Connor McDavid, 8. Plenty to like from him on the attack, where he finished with two assists. He made ten contributions to Grade A shots, six of them on the power play… He had nine wins and two losses on the dot.
Leon Draisaitl, 6. I’d give him a grade of nine for his power play work, a three for his iffy even strength play, which averages out to a six.
Jesse Puljujarvi, 6. Hustled hard but could not break through this game. Cracked a wicked slot shot on net in the first off his own rebound. He got a 5-alarm one-timer late in the game.
Zack Kassian, 3 . He was invisible on the ice, which is saying something for someone so big.
Darnell Nurse, 3. His worst game of the year? Likely. He lost too many battles. Five major mistakes on Grade A shots against at even strength. His late turnover in the first led to a wicked Dubois shot. Hammered Blake Wheeler with a hard hit. He got beat again on a dangerous chance by Dubois in the third.
Tyson Barrie, 7 . Edmonton’s best d-man this game. He made four major contributions to Grade A shots for at even strength and not a mistake on one against (but one such error on the power play).
Evan Bouchard, 3. Another iffy defensive game. He made six major mistakes on Grade A shots against.
Mikko Koskinen, 3. In the end, he let in four goals on 14 Grade A shot, not so terrible, but not nearly good enough, especially with that one stinker goal against.
Stuart Skinner, 8. Stopped a partial breakaway shot by Kyle Connor for his first save. Stopped a Grade A shot from Dubois as well. What’s not to like?

BLH’s Thoughts: That was as close to a playoff game as one will ever see this early in the season and in semi-predictable fashion the Oilers shit the bed because in the post-season goaltending and 5v5 scoring is of the utmost importance. The Jets also had the better goaltending, better bottom-six, and I felt their defense was much more engaged.

From an individual standpoint, aside from the usual suspects on Edmonton, I thought Yamamoto was really engaged and the same with Puljujarvi. McLeod had his flashes of brilliance as did Foegele and I was happy to see Brendan Perlini get a really good scoring chance. How about Stuart Skinner coming in for the final frame and standing on his head? Well done, kid!

Oilersnation

GDB 15.0 Wrap Up

The Oilers struggled out of the gate allowing the first goal against in what feels like the millionth time this year and once again, Edmonton was forced to chase the game all night long.
Winnipeg took two penalties and Leon Draisaitl capitalized on both. But again, too little too late. Edmonton poured it on with multiple solid looks in the final frame, but the Winnipeg Jets held strong.
For the Oilers, it wraps up a five-game road trip that seems them go 2-3 with wins against Boston and St. Louis, but falling to Detroit, Buffalo and Winnipeg. Edmonton didn’t do a ton to make it easy on themselves and in all honestly, could’ve walked away winless on this roadtrip.
Draisaitl now has scored seven multi-goal games. The next closest? 20 other players with two multi-goal games.
Nik Ehlers scored Winnipeg’s second goal of the game moments after the refs missed a blatant interference call committed by Mark Scheifele on Derek Ryan.

the refs miss a pretty easy interference call on scheifele, and then andrew copp is able to feed nik ehlers to make it a 2-0 game. pic.twitter.com/9Os9reKkpO

— zach (@zjlaing) November 17, 2021

If I’m not mistaken, it’s something like six straight games now that the Oilers have sacrificed the first goal of the game.
By the numbers, any defenceman not named Tyson Barrie had a poor game. Duncan Keith was fighting it and was directly involved in turning over a few pucks that led to goals the other way.

BLH’s Thoughts: I get that Mikko let in a couple of softies and early in the game he looked rough, but even then, he still made some really key saves. This game could’ve been REALLY ugly had he not come up clutch. That said, is he starting to show some fatigue after playing most of the season so far?

Ya know, it would’ve been nice if Zack Kassian would’ve let Winnipeg’s stars know they were in for a long night like the Jets did with Leon Draisaitl, but this club doesn’t employ those kind of players in their bottom-six aside from Kass and Foegele and McLovin’ isn’t really that type, he’s just a really engaged forechecker.

Games like this are where we see the value of having big physically imposing defensemen ~NAY~ players(!!!) on your roster. Edmonton’s puck movers couldn’t move said puck effectively all night thanks to Winnipeg’s insane pursuit of that little black disc. Maybe some bigger bodies would’ve been more able to handle that kind of physicality?

The irony in that statement is that Edmonton’s best defenseman on the night was Tyson Barrie, an offensive blueliner, and one of their worst dman was Darnell Nurse, their most physical man on the backend.

Conversely, sans what you’d truly define as a “puck-moving” blueliner, Winnipeg’s defenders seemed to control their end of the ice very comfortably. The Oilers didn’t give them or Connor Hellebuyck any real problems the entire evening and the Jets easily kept Edmonton to the outside and reaped the benefits.

Here’s a question, how much of the Oilers’ 5v5 struggles defensively are on playing personnel and how much are on coaching tactics? Bob Stauffer was saying on his radio show the other day that teams generally find their rhythm in January… Can this team wait that long to sort out it’s even strength issues and what happens if they can’t? Of course, this is easy to ask after a loss, but should the organization consider a change behind the bench at that point?

Spector’s Hockey

NBC SPORTS: Adam Gretz believes there are teams that should regret not making a push to acquire Vladimir Tarasenko from the St. Louis Blues after the 29-year-old winger requested a trade this summer.

The Seattle Kraken passed on selecting an unprotected Tarasenko in the expansion draft.

TVA SPORTS: Jean-Charles Lajoie suggested the Montreal Canadiens could use a defenseman to improve their blueline shortcomings this season. Philippe Boucher agreed, proposing they look at acquiring Samuel Girard from the Colorado Avalanche.