Struggling Edmonton Oilers move Draisaitl up with McDavid

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And you thought last year’s edition of the Edmonton Oilers got off to a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start?

The current team might as well have come into this season waving an orange and blue banner that says: ‘Hold my beer.’

While the sample size has been small so far, as far as early starts go, this was about the worst one since 2015 — back when a certain first-overall draft pick by the name of Connor McDavid was taking his first strides into the NHL.

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Heading into Tuesday’s game against the visiting Philadelphia Flyers, the Oilers were in danger of going 0-4 for the first time since.

Somehow, things had started out even worse than last year, on the way to a franchise-low 2-9-1 start that spelled the end for head coach Jay Woodcroft in Edmonton, despite boasting a .643 win percentage.

That stood as a club-best until his replacement, Kris Knoblauch one-upped it by surpassing the .700 mark to get the team back on track for a push to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

That’s the part we knew.

The part we didn’t was that they’d be following the same formula — unproven and unlikely as it is — again into this season.

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And while it’s highly unlikely that, however bad it ends up getting this time around, Oilers brass could even hope of pulling the trigger on another coaching change and have it work out even half as well, you can bet Knoblauch’s been feeling like he’s in the proverbial hot seat.

Hence the decision to go with the Oilers’ tested and true fallback plan … or is it ‘fallout’, considering it’s only four games in and they already combined their two biggest guns, McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, two of the best centres you’ll find in the league, on the same line.

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It’s the nuclear option because if it doesn’t go according to plan, there is nothing left in the Oilers’ arsenal. So, forgive them if they had to suppress at least some sense of do or die Tuesday.

“Just, I think, so that they’re all feeling it, have the puck, and are making plays,” Knoblauch said of the rationale behind his lineup moves coming out of Tuesday’s morning skate. “Right now, for any skilled player or any player in particular, when you get that first goal or assist, it makes you feel much better.

“And hopefully they can play their best playing with our best players.”

The dynamic duo, of course, appears together on the Oilers power play, which was middling at 20 per cent having gone 1-for-5 three games in.

Now it’s time to find out how McDavid and Draisaitl do together at even strength.

Then again, putting pucks in is only part of the equation the Oilers have found themselves buried under.

“I think we’ve had enough looks to score more goals that we’ve been scoring,” Draisaitl said Tuesday morning. “So, I don’t think it only comes from defence, but I think our starting point needs to be defending and worrying about just keeping the puck out of our net.

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“And that’ll give us a chance any night.”

A chance, sure. But what they really need to find are answers. Chiefly, why one of the most potent offences in the NHL hasn’t been able to fight its way out of a moist towelette since the last time they found themselves 0-3, in the Stanley Cup Final.

“It’s not ideal. It’s not where we wanted to be,” Draisaitl said. “We put emphasis on having a good start and we haven’t had that, so obviously there’s some frustration.

“Tonight’s a great chance for us to get a win and go from there. And build our game and just get better, day by day.”

Podkolzin up, Skinner down

Knoblauch also bumped up newcomer Vasily Podkolzin to the second line next to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Viktor Arvidsson, leaving Jeff Skinner the odd man out — despite being the only Oilers player to score 5-on-5 without having an opposing defenceman boot in an own goal.

Skinner’s name was slotted on the third line Tuesday.

At the same time, the defence has weighed heavily on the mind of the team that was outscored by a ratio of 5:1 over their first three games.

Four games in and Darnell Nurse was paired with his third different partner this season, as the Oilers continue to fidget for replacements for the likes of Cody Ceci, Vincent Desharnais, and Philip Broberg — hardly the three hardest losses an NHL team has had to recover from. But it’s become more and more apparent they were pieces that fit well here.

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“I think it’s important that in building chemistry you have the right partner to play with and know what each guy wants,” Knoblauch said. “But we do also have other pairs that we’re trying to build chemistry also.

“It’s not ideal that Darnell’s had the amount of partners that he’s had.”

E-mail: [email protected]

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge

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