The Edmonton Oilers’ six-game homestand concluded with a 5-1 loss to the Florida Panthers at Rogers Place on Saturday (Dec. 16). It was the second straight defeat for the Oilers following an eight-game win streak.
Edmonton winger Zach Hyman scored his team-leading 18th goal, while Calvin Pickard made 34 saves in just his third start as an Oilers goaltender.
Carter Verhaeghe opened and closed the scoring for the Panthers, who jumped out to a 3-0 lead after the first period and never looked back. Florida netminder Sergei Bobrovsky made 38 saves for the win.
Since blowing a 3-2 lead and losing 7-4 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday (Dec. 14), Edmonton has been outscored 10-2 over its last four periods.
The Oilers are now 10-5-0 since firing head coach Jay Woodcroft on Nov. 12 and replacing him behind the bench with Kris Knoblauch. Here are four takeaways from Saturday’s game.
Panthers Strike First and Fast
Verhaeghe scored just 5:33 into the game to put his team in front 1-0. Brandon Montour and Aleksander Barkov then beat Pickard with goals at 18:58 and 19:27 of the first period, respectively, a 29-second outburst that effectively put the game away.
Edmonton has now been scored on within the first six minutes in three straight games, a troubling trend. The Oilers gave up a goal at 3:21 to Connor Bedard of the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday (Dec. 12) and to Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos at 1:07 on Thursday.
Related: 5 Takeaways From Oilers’ Streak-Ending 7-4 Loss to Lightning
The Oilers had not allowed a goal in the opening six minutes of the game before changing coaches last month but have since given up a goal during the first six minutes in five of 15 games under Knoblauch.
In its last two games, Edmonton was able to rally from its early deficit, beating the Blackhawks 4-1 and taking a lead over the Lightning before ultimately losing. In this one against Florida, the Oilers dug themselves a hole that was too deep to escape.
Draisaitl Struggling for Oilers
Oilers center Leon Draisaitl was guilty on Florida’s first and third goals, losing his man both times and watching them bury the puck. To make matters worse, Draisaitl coughed up the puck, leading to Barkov’s goal.
Against the Lightning, Draisaitl took a regrettable penalty, tripping Nikita Kucherov on the game’s opening shift, and was in the box when Stamkos scored to give the Bolts a 1-0 lead. Draisaitl has a minus-two rating in each of the last two games.
His defensive lapses might get more of a pass if Draisaitl was producing offensively at his usual spectacular rate, but he’s struggling at that end of the ice, too. This game against Florida was his second consecutive contest without a point, and he has a total of just five points over the last eight games.
Draisaitl has 12 goals and 21 assists through 28 games, putting him on pace to compile 95 points this season. For 99% of hockey players on the planet, that’s a career year. For Draisaitl, that would be — by a wide margin — his fewest points in a full-length season since 2017-18.
With Edmonton more than one-third of the way through its 2023-24 schedule, Draisaitl’s malaise can no longer be dismissed as just a minor slump. He needs to be better, defensively and especially offensively.
Putting Pickard’s Play in Perspective
While he wasn’t awful against the Panthers, Pickard certainly wasn’t good between the pipes for the Oilers, either. He looked exactly like what he has been for the last several seasons: a borderline NHL/AHL (American Hockey League) goaltender.
After Pickard played well in Edmonton’s 4-1 win over the New Jersey Devils last Sunday (Dec. 10), there was some chatter in Oil Country that the Oilers had found themselves a capable backup in the 31-year-old journeymen goalie. But to make such a statement based on one game was really just wishful thinking: there’s a reason Pickard hasn’t spent a full season in the NHL since 2016-17.
Pickard can give the Oilers a decent outing here or there, but he’s not someone who can be relied on for even 15 to 20 starts over an 82-game schedule. And Edmonton needs a lot more than that from its No. 2 netminder, given the ups and downs of starter Stuart Skinner.
Ideally, Jack Campbell would be on his way back to Edmonton to assume his role alongside Skinner in a 1/1A ‘tender tandem. The Oilers assigned Campbell to the AHL last month so that the struggling veteran could get his game back on track with the Bakersfield Condors, but Campbell is doing anything but that. The former NHL All-Star was pulled after giving up four goals on 17 shots in a 5-2 loss to the Coachella Valley Firebirds on Saturday, and now has a 4-5 record with a 3.46 goals against average (GAA) and .888 save percentage (SV%) since joining the Condors.
Bouchard’s Streak Ends
Edmonton blueliner Evan Bouchard was kept off the scoresheet Saturday, ending his streak of 13 games in a row recording at least one point.
It was a tremendous run for the 24-year-old, who achieved the second-longest single-season point streak by a defenseman in Oilers history. Current Edmonton assistant coach Paul Coffey has the record of 28 games, set in 1985-86. Bouchard also became only the sixth blueliner in the last 24 years to have a point streak of at least 13 games.
Connor McDavid assisted on Hyman’s goal to extend his point streak to 12 games. This is the eighth time in his NHL career that the Oilers captain has a point in at least a dozen straight games.
McDavid will look to keep that streak alive and help his team get back in the win column Tuesday (Dec. 19) when Edmonton visits Long Island to take on the New York Islanders at UBS Arena.
