The Edmonton Oilers suffered just one regulation loss while winning eight of their first 10 games en route to first place in the Western Conference.
There was plenty of reason for optimism for Mike Babcock’s squad. Then came the Saturday Night Massacre.
Edmonton not only had its three-game winning streak snapped by the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs, it suffered its ugliest loss of the season on Hockey Night in Canada, 7-2. The Oilers will try and bounce back on Monday night when they host the Detroit Red Wings.
“It’s a shame because, you know, a Saturday night against these guys is what we live for as hockey players, and it just wasn’t enough,” Oilers right wing Kasperi Kapanen said. “It’s a shame. I think we should be really excited to play a game like this (Saturday) and, you know, for whatever reason, we just weren’t at our best … Hopefully, this kind of wakes us up and then we just bring our best on Monday.”
Leon Draisaitl scored both goals for the Oilers to give him 12 for the season, tied with Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov for top spot in the NHL. Connor McDavid assisted on both goals to increase his league-leading point total to 33, including an NHL-best 25 assists, in just 11 games. But scoring from the team’s bottom six forwards continues to be an issue.
“Their bottom six was better than ours, but the bottom line is they were better than us, they were more competitive than us,” Babcock said. “They were quicker than us, they were better. We can blame anybody we want. As a group, as a coach, (Toronto coach) Jim Hiller had his group playing harder than I had my group. That’s on me.”
“They were just better than us,” left wing Zach Hyman added. “They were more competitive, they won more battles … they just beat us in every area.”
Detroit, seventh in the Atlantic Division, will be finishing up a four-game road trip that started with a 4-3 shootout loss at Seattle followed by a 5-2 victory at Vancouver. The Red Wings come in off a 4-1 loss at Calgary on Saturday, the team’s first regulation loss in seven games.
Andrew Copp scored the lone goal for the Red Wings to tie it 1-1 early in the second period, but the Flames answered with three consecutive goals later in the period to pull away for the easy win. It marked Detroit’s first loss to Calgary since March 12, 2022.
“I thought it was one of our poorer nights, as far as execution goes,” Detroit coach Todd McLellan said.
Copp added that the Red Wings “never really got traction” against the Flames. They’ll need to find a spark on offense to keep up with the Oilers, whose 4.36 goals per game lead the NHL. Detroit ranks 25th at 2.55 per game.
“We had a couple of good shifts, maybe a couple good minutes at a time, but never really kind of fully got control of the game and shift after shift where we were doing all the right things,” Copp said.
“It wasn’t our best night, for sure. We have one more game to salvage the road trip.”