Oilers Lose in the Preseason - Twitter Blows Up

Tonight’s game saw the Oilers ice the worst defense they have iced so far this preseason. They were missing Mark Fayne, Oscar Klefbom and assigned Darell Nurse to Bakersfield yesterday. The top pairing was Andrew Ference and Nikita Nikitin or maybe it was Andrej Sekera and Justin Schultz or just maybe it was Eric Gryba and Griffin Reinhart. No matter how you slice it only one of those defensemen is realistically considered top 4 and couple of them were barely considered 7th defensemen in the Eastern Conference. So yes the was ugly maybe even fugly but if Cam Talbot is going to live up to hype he going to have to play better than this as well.

Highlights

The Good

The third line. This is the Oilers secret weapon. Taylor Hall and Connor McDavid are going to be watched all season long. So is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Benoit Pouliot and Jordan Eberle but that third line with Anton Lander and Nail Yakupov, they may be the difference on the score board. Last game it was the Lander show this game it was Yakupov that evened it up to end the 1st period and give the Oilers a chance to make a game of it in the last two periods.

The Bad

I know it’s preseason and all but I can’t say that I’ve seen Cam Talbot play a good game yet. I’m not sure what it is but against Calgary in the first game Talbot gave up a weak goal, then against Winnipeg he gave up another two weak goals, and then today there were another couple that he should’ve had. Sure he had a bad defense in front of him but he was facing AHL players for the most part in most of these games. I’m not sure what to think. Maybe this is just new team jitters or preseason "who gives a crap" but so far I’ve been more impressed by Andres Nilsson and Ben Scrivens than I have been by Talbot.

The Ugly

As I mentioned before, if this the Oilers defense at any point during the season the Oilers are truly f****d. There is nothing more to say about this potential defense. If none of these defensemen is waived/demoted tomorrow I will be upset.

Up Next

Well the preseason series moves to Vancouver. The Oilers last preseason game will happen on Saturday against the Canucks. It’s an 8PM start on SportsNet hopefully we don’t get the Vancouver broadcast crew again. After that it’s almost a 5 days before the Oilers are in action again when they start the season in St. Louis to take on the Blues.