Down But Not Out

Two days ago the Oilers faced off against 75% of the Manitoba Moose and beat them handily. Today the Oilers faced off against 75% of the Winnipeg Jets and used their biggest weakness, goaltending, against them to comeback from a 3-0 deficit and win 4-3 in overtime.

Highlights

The Good

This is the fourth preseason game for the Oilers and they are 4-0-0 but what we have seen in these games that we haven’t seen in a while is the ability for the Oilers to comeback in games. That is a huge step for the Oilers and if this can carry over to the regular season, there will be a lot more interesting games for us to watch.

The Bad

The defense is still a bit of a hot mess and I’m not sure if its because of the AHL defensemen on the team. Two of the three goals against were directly due to defensive break downs. On the first goal both Andrej Sekera and Rob Klinkhammer went after the puck carrier leaving JC Lipon completely alone in the slot for an easy goal. On the third goal the defense was running around after the puck instead of covering the open players. These are obviously things that will get worked on in the remainder of training camp but in this game they were quite noticeable.

The Ugly

The power play. The Oilers were 1 for 8 with the man advantage. On a team that had Taylor Hall, Nail Yakupov and Leon Draisaitl working the power play you’d think that they’d have scored at more than once in eight tries especially because they were 0/5 in the first 2 periods. Even the game winning goal in overtime didn't come during the 4v3, it came seconds after the penalty expired and the penalized player was skating back into the play. I'm guessing that the power play will be a focus of Todd McLellan and staff after the next round of cuts occurs.

The Fugly

I had to include this because of how stupid this play/player was. The Oilers were down 3-0 at this point and Phil McRae took tripping penalty with 5:46 gone in the third. Shortly after that penalty Andrew Miller took a tripping penalty giving the Jets a brief 30 second 5v3 power play. The penalty killers successfully killed off McRae’s penalty and he came back on the ice. Less than 30 seconds later he was back in the penalty box because of a blatant elbow he threw on Mark Scheifele. Not only was it a cheap shot it also put the Oilers back into 3v5 situation that could've ended the game right there. For what its worth I didn't see him back out on the ice again after that but that may just be my ageing eyes.

Up Next

The Oilers are off to Saskatoon to play the Wild. Depending on the lines this may be the Oilers’ toughest challenge of the preseason. The Wild play a very structured game and have a pretty strong defense. Also Connor McDavid.