McDavid’s injury looms large as Oilers search for offence
Several unsettling early-season trends continued for the Oilers in this contest. From an Edmonton perspective, though, everything took a back seat to the fact McDavid left after just 37 seconds of action.
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Nationwide Arena in Columbus has not been kind to the Edmonton Oilers for some time. Things escalated to a whole other level on Monday night, however, as not only were the Oilers thumped 6-1 by the Blue Jackets, but Connor McDavid’s night ended after one shift.
Several unsettling early-season trends continued for the Oilers in this contest. From an Edmonton perspective, though, everything took a back seat to the fact McDavid left after just 37 seconds of action.
Not long after the opening faceoff, McDavid whizzed into the Blue Jackets zone and picked up the puck just inside the blue line. As Columbus defenceman Ivan Provorov closed on McDavid, Blue Jackets D-man Zach Werenski — who had been engaged with Leon Draisaitl along the boards — reached in with his stick and caught McDavid’s right skate. No. 97 hit the ice, contacted the boards and moments later went to the Oilers bench appearing to favour his left leg. Later on in the period, Edmonton announced McDavid would not return to the game due to what the team called a lower-body injury. After the game, Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch said McDavid would fly back to Alberta for further evaluation, while the team will head to Nashville and close out a three-game road trip against the Predators on Thursday.
“He’s going to go back to Edmonton, he’s going to get evaluated and I’ll have (an update on Tuesday])” Knoblauch said after the game.
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While there was no penalty on Werenski — and, to be clear, it sure seemed like there could have been — that was not the case a couple of minutes later when Edmonton forward Viktor Arvidsson lost his footing and ploughed into Columbus goalie Elvis Merzlikins behind the net. That put the Jackets on the power play, where Sean Monahan opened the scoring just 2:18 into the contest by redirecting a Kirill Marchenko pass from the slot in front of Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner. With that, for the seventh time in 10 outings this year, the 4-5-1 Oilers allowed their opponent to take a 1-0 lead. By the end of the first period, the Columbus advantage had grown to 3-0 as it became increasingly apparent this was going to be a miserable Monday in Ohio for the visitors.
“I think it was a little deflating for our team,” Knoblauch said of the first goal. “It just seemed like mistakes we made went in the net —not that I’m blaming (Skinner) because there wasn’t much opportunity to save those — but that first goal against was a tough one.”
Despite the early blow, Edmonton — which has now gone five years without a win in Columbus — had some opportunities to make a game of this. Zach Hyman — still in search of his first tally of the season — had a good look denied by Merzlikins in the opening frame. Late in the first, the Oilers had a prime chance to start chipping away at a three-goal deficit in the form of a five-on-three man advantage. Evan Bouchard dinged a crossbar, but the McDavid-less squad was unable to breakthrough and a power play that entered the night operating at just 13 per cent — worse than all but five teams in the league — went 1-for-6 against the Jackets. That goal from Mattias Ekholm came with just 27 ceremonial seconds left in the game and saved Edmonton from its second 6-0 defeat of this young campaign.
“Just, overall, a lot of battles we should have won,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said after the defeat. “We know they’re a fast team, they capitalize on little breakdowns and that’s what we saw. Obviously, the first power-play goal got them going and then we had some looks, (but) we couldn’t find a way to beat their goalie.”
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Yes, this team that’s shown such an ability to fill the net in the past is having a heck of a time scoring goals. Where a Columbus squad nobody expected much from has now put up a half-dozen goals in a game on four occasions this year, the Oilers have sunk all the way to 31st in the league with just 2.20 goals per game. The team’s strong underlying numbers are nice and all, but at some point soon the Oilers have to find a way to make the goals they should be scoring into goals they are scoring. The desire to do that, however, can sometimes lead well-intentioned players to make poor decisions with the puck.
“Even if we’re down a couple goals, just play with the same mindset; simple game, play with speed, use each other,” Nugent-Hopkins said when asked how his club could have clawed back in this one. “We don’t need to force things, we don’t need to cheat the game. What we do is good enough to win on most nights and tonight we got away from it a bit, started losing some battles and they took over.”
Of course, getting positive results is going to become that much harder should McDavid be sidelined for any length of time.
“Obviously our team is going to look different,” Knoblauch said, “but maybe that’s one, two games; I’m not sure.”
The only certainty right now is — with or without their captain — the Oilers need to score more to fight their way out of this sluggish start.
