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Thursday, November 28, 2024

Rest is over, recharged Edmonton Oilers heading back into the battle

“It’s no secret; we know how to play and how to be a good hockey team.”

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The Edmonton Oilers season can be summed up in 20 words and two acronyms: Loss, loss, loss, win, win, loss, OTL, win, win, loss, win, win, loss, loss, win, win, win, OTL, loss, win, loss, win.

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But you can just as easily reduce it to one word. Inconsistent.

Only one win streak longer than two games (three), only one losing streak longer than two games (three).

They haven’t been great, but they haven’t been brutal. They’re stuck in average, unable to shift into anything more productive.

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It could be better, but they know from experience that it could also be worse.

“We’re in a fine position,” said Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl, as the equipment staff loaded the bags for a three-game road trip that begins with back-to-back stops in Utah and Colorado Friday and Saturday.

“It’s not exactly where we want to be but we’re certainly within striking distance of where we want to be. It’s just a matter of stringing them together a little bit, finding a couple of win streaks that last a little longer than two games. That’s our plan, that’s what we’re looking to do.”

As they return from a five-day break at the quarter mark of their schedule, the Oilers are well aware that they’ve been underachieving. Sitting ninth in the Western Conference at 11-9-2 isn’t where anyone imagined a team three years into a Stanley Cup window would be at this point, but the concern level remains fairly low so far.

They see things moving in a better direction, an opinion reinforced by a 6-2 win over the New York Rangers prior to the break, and believe it’s only a matter of time before they’re back to being the Oilers.

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“It’s just sticking with fundamentals,” said winger Corey Perry. “Playing the right way each and every night, each and every shift. The recipe is there. We’ve seen it, we’ve done it. It’s just a matter of doing it over and over again. It’s no secret; we know how to play and how to be a good hockey team.”

“Just the urgency of it, the urgency of wanting to win hockey games and playing the same type of game every single night,” added Draisaitl. “That’s something we can look to improve on.”

The Oilers always seem to be at their best when the stakes are bigger and emotional dial gets turned a little higher. It’s not always easy to find that level in mid-November. That doesn’t mean that Oilers can simply flip a switch, but Perry is certain it will happen organically as they get deeper into the schedule.

“It’s a long season, to play emotionally high every single night is tough,” he said. “You say you want to but it’s not easy. As we go along here you’re going to see us start ramping up a little bit. That’s just the way the whole season goes.”

For injured winger Zach Hyman, who practised with the team Thursday and could be back in the lineup at some point on the road trip, putting together a consistent run means bearing down on scoring chances and cashing in on all the work that lead up to them.

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The Oilers are doing a lot of the things that normally generate offence, which provides breathing room and camouflages their mistakes, but the goals aren’t coming. And neither are the wins.

“Consistency is something that almost every team in the league struggles with at some point during a season,” said Hyman. “Everybody goes out there and you try to make the right play, you try to do all the right things. When (goals) are going in it’s probably easier to be consistent because the little mistakes go unnoticed.

“I think for our group there are times we’ve played really well. The puck hasn’t gone in for us at the same rate we’re used to but we’re pretty solid and on special teams we’re starting to come.”

As for a five-day break between games, it remains to be seen what impact that had on a team that might have played its best game of the season before having to shut things down.

“I thought we played an excellent game against the Rangers,” said Perry. “We were skating, we were moving the puck. We had guys going to the net, we broke the puck out well. It was everything that you wanted to see.

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“And emotionally we were involved in the game and that just tells me right there that this team was ready to play.”

Yes, they got some rest and healed some bumps over the last five days, but they also had a little momentum that’s gone now. Now we’ll see if they can pick up where they left off.

“We just tried to get the most out of every day,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Whether it was working on the power play one day, the penalty kill another or fixing our breakouts and some details that we feel can make a difference.

“And we also gave the guys an extra day off to feel rested because the workload had been pretty high in the previous two weeks. We had some productive practices. We’ll find out this weekend if it was beneficial.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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