Oilers’ Babcock caught leaning on stars: ‘I played them too much’

EDMONTON — For hockey coaches, over-playing Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is like a drug. A drug that Mike Babcock swore he wouldn’t take.

Then his entire second line landed on the injured list, and his third-line centre has been dropping in and out of the lineup as well.

It’s a wicked elixir, to be sure, one that even the strongest-willed prohibitionist could not keep from their lips.

“We needed our big boys, obviously. I played them too much,” Babcock admitted after Edmonton’s first regulation loss of the season, a 4-2 setback at the hands of the Utah Mammoth.

Edmonton chased the game, minus an entire unit of Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Matt Savoie, all injured. Down 1-0, down 3-1, then 3-2, the game was always in reach.

Always just a McDavid-to-Draisaitl one-timer away from being rescued.

So Babcock rode McDavid for 25 minutes and 52 seconds, more than any Mammoth player. He played Draisaitl 23 minutes, and Evan Bouchard, hockey’s most dynamic defenceman of late, skated to the tune of 27:03.

The trio combined for a goal — Draisaitl’s fifth from McDavid and Bouchard — and 10 shots on goal. But for the first time this season, the Oilers’ opponent got both the points while Edmonton’s big guns had to settle for a good workout.

“It has to stop. I look at it every night and go, ‘What the heck am I doing?'” Babcock said. “We’ve been real lucky that the games have been spaced out … but that’s not the NHL. It’s impossible…

“But I’m also trying to survive right now.”

On the night the Milwaukee Brewers swept the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers out of baseball’s playoffs, the Mammoth beat the Oilers in regulation for the first time in their existence. Utah entered the game with the most powerplay goals in the NHL (eight), and scored two more against the Oilers.

“It was a tight-checking game — both teams really dug in. I thought it was a great game all around,” McDavid said. “Two good teams that were working and checking, and it came down to special teams. They found a way to get a couple and we didn’t.”

For the second straight game, what serves as Edmonton’s second- third- and fourth-lines just didn’t help enough.

Babcock said he didn’t like that Group of 9’s game in a 4-1 win at Los Angeles Tuesday, and back at home Thursday they simply helped pass the time — but did not help their team win.

The formula here in Edmonton is simple: Get a goal from McDavid’s line at even strength, get a power play goal, and get one from the group known as “everyone else,” and you’ll get to three goals every night. The top end and the power play are the most productive in hockey, but without their second line, the Bottom 9 forwards have not found that goal per game that Babcock seeks.

“The good thing for us is we’re getting to see everyone in the organization. We’re seeing who can play and who can’t,” the coach said. “(Utah) has got a deep team, and we’re going to have a deep team too. But right now we’re not as deep, and I thought that showed tonight.”

Devon Levi was excellent in his first loss as an Oiler, and Babcock said that Tristan Jarry will start in goal when these two clubs reunite Saturday evening in Salt Lake City.

The goaltending has been excellent this season, and really, there’s not a lot to complain about after a 5-1-1 start.

But defenceman Shakir Mukhamadullin caught the coach’s glare when he failed to tie up Logan Cooley’s stick on the 3-1 Utah goal. “The third one kills you,” Babcock said. “You can’t give that up. It’s a freebie.”

A big kid from Ufa, Russia, Mukhamadullin came over in the Darnell Nurse trade. He fell out of the lineup after the two Vancouver games to open the season for soft play around his own net, and does not appear to have completely learned his lesson.

He’ll play as long as Jake Walman is hurt, but there has to be more from Mukhamadullin if he’s going to hang around as a No. 6 D-man. When you’re his size — six-foot-five, 205 pounds — you’d better play a whole lot tougher than this kid has thus far.

As for the rest of the team, which is finding its way through an injury-plagued season, the process of finding their game under Babcock will wrestle with trying to stay near the top of the Pacific until people start coming back. They’re playing ultra-low event hockey right now, which wasn’t necessarily the plan.

“Part of the game is defending and part of the game is offence too, so we have to find the balance,” McDavid said. “We’ve done a good job checking and I thought we had enough chances to tie the game up, but it didn’t go that way tonight.”

“Obviously it is unique — we’re missing a lot of guys up front,” he said. “But we expect to win every night, no matter who is on the lineup.”