Edmonton Oilers<\/a> got one empty net goal from its Top 6, zero points from its top defensive pairing, and Leon Draisaitl still isn\u2019t even playing.<\/p>\nStill, Edmonton beat Seattle 3-0 \u2014the Oilers\u2019 first four-game winning streak of the season \u2014\u00a0on goals by depth wingers Max Jones and Kasperi Kapanen, and a shutout by a guy who started the season in Bakersfield, the emerging Connor Ingram.<\/p>\n
A team that stumbled and bumbled through the first 65 games of the season suddenly has a defensive posture, has eliminated the risk from its game, and is getting top-tier goaltending. It\u2019s the ultimate flick of the switch \u2014\u00a0from derelict to deadly, from frazzled to focused.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of pucks don\u2019t even get to me anymore,\u201d marvelled Ingram, who stopped all 27 shots on his 29th birthday \u2014\u00a0the first Oilers goalie ever to post a shutout on his birthday. \u201cAnd when they do, there\u2019s bodies and guys around helping out. We put an emphasis on coming back, and now it\u2019s just about doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not an X\u2019s and O\u2019s guy, but for me it seems like it\u2019s going well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure, it must be said that Seattle has a popgun offence, and the Oilers have handled them efficiently with seven straight wins here at Rogers Place. But there is a certain calm to Edmonton\u2019s game these days, and a team that has been known to be power-play merchants just won their fourth straight game without a single PPG along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur game isn\u2019t sexy right now. It\u2019s not fancy,\u201d said head coach Kris Knoblauch. \u201cIt\u2019s just a lot of little things, and that\u2019s usually the difference between winning and losing. We have six D and 12 forwards each night who are doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While teams like Winnipeg and Ottawa are playing life and death hockey just to qualify for the post-season, out here in the Pillow Fight Pacific, there\u2019s never been any real doubt that the Oilers would qualify to defend their back-to-back Western Conference titles.<\/p>\n
But when you win six playoff rounds in two seasons, you know what it\u2019s supposed to look like when April 15th rolls around. And on about March 15, Edmonton\u2019s game didn\u2019t look anything like that.<\/p>\n
So they had a team meeting, as most teams would, and instead of making any grand proclamations, the Oilers players told each other to simply improve their game incrementally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like ever since we had the conversation about everyone stepping up a bit, it seems like everyone\u2019s kind of just doing a little bit extra out there,\u201d said Jones, whose goal just 5:28 into the game stood up as the GWG. \u201cThe start of the game, it was pretty evident. You saw how fast it was and how fast we were playing. Just playing simple and it carried out through the whole game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones\u2019 goal was no masterpiece, though Italy\u2019s national soccer team could have used a header like the one he provided when Jake Walman\u2019s shot smoked his visor and ended up in the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it hit my elbow and then my face,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThey don\u2019t ask how\u2026Well, I guess you (media) guys do. I think it was literally off my face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here in Edmonton, the big boys in the Top 6 are never an issue.<\/p>\n
The power play leads the league every season. Connor McDavid and Draisaitl are in the Art Ross and Maurice \u201cRocket\u201d Richard races every year. Zach Hyman is a lock for 35-50 goals, Nugent-Hopkins is money, and Bouchard is a Top 3 scorer among NHL defencemen over the past four seasons.<\/p>\n
What they\u2019ve constantly been searching for is an identity among their Bottom 6 forwards, a D-corps that can hunker down and defend a lead, and goaltending.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, all of those qualities have emerged.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams are going to have their pushes. They\u2019re going to have their chances,\u201d said Kapanen, who has matured into an excellent third-line penalty killer with some offensive jam, great speed and good size. \u201cBut when you have a goalie like Ingo, who is playing extremely well right now, that\u2019s what it looks like. It was a good effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
The more high-end offensive players a team has, the fewer chances are required to create the requisite three or four goals needed to win. So it becomes about what you give up, and that\u2019s the part of the game that\u2019s always been the issue here in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
Frankly, they\u2019ve never been very good at playing boring hockey, these Oilers. But when they do, it tends to work for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still have amazing players that can play with the puck and make plays, but the general idea is to simplify,\u201d Kapanen explained. \u201cWe\u2019re obviously missing Leo (Draisaitl) out there, but it seems to be working right now. So we need to keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Now they\u2019re just showin\u2019 off. The Edmonton Oilers got one empty net goal from its Top 6,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-574548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}