Avalanche 6, Oilers 2 post-game Oil Spills: The season goes on long after the thrill of playing is gone
By Cam Lewis
5 years ago The Oilers played a pretty solid, uhhh, 10-or-so minutes last night. Unfortunately, NHL games are *checks notes* 60 minutes long, so the Avalanche walked away with an easy win.
What happened?
Milan Lucic (more on him in a minute) got the scoring opened midway through the first period. Matt Benning, who has actually been playing quite well as of late, fired a clapper towards the net and the big man got a stick on it in front for the redirection.
A few minutes later, Darnell Nurse rushed the puck into the zone and roofed a shot over Semyon Varlamov from a sharp angle to give the Oilers a 2-0 lead. Atta be, Darryl!!!
Aaaaaaand then the Oilers just kinda stopped playing. They carried that 2-0 lead into the second period but the Avs would go on to score six unanswered goals in the final 40 minutes. Here’s all of them in a nice, convenient, incredibly depressing two-minute video!
By the numbers
As I said above, the Oilers played a pretty good first period and then just gave up in the second and third. Actually, that’s a little generous. After the Oilers went up 2-0, Colorado seemed to figure out that the Oilers would put up at least a little bit of a fight, so they started playing hard and took control of the game. Even in the third period when the Avs were nursing a cozy two-goal lead, the Oilers couldn’t get anything going.
Thoughts…
- Mikko Koskinen was a disaster last night. I feel bad for the guy because he really, really doesn’t need to be playing every single game down the stretch given we’ve known for quite some time this team isn’t making the playoffs. I don’t know what the strategy is here. Are the Oilers trying to injure Koskinen so they can hide him on the LTIR next year? Are they trying to gut his confidence so he rips up his contract and goes back to the KHL? Do they just hate Anthony Stolarz? Who knows! Thinking about why this organization does the things they do makes me dizzy.
- One of the most entertaining parts of last night was Milan Lucic getting mad online and dunking on the Sportsnet Stats account. Sportsnet tweeted out that Lucic had scored his first goal in 17 road games. Lucic, about 20 minutes after the game ended, logged on and barked at them for not congratulating him for scoring his 500th point on Saturday. On one hand, this is a rude thing for Sportsnet to tweet and they’re clearly digging for LOL OILERS retweets and likes, so good on Lucic for dunking on them. On the other hand, is Lucic really pimping out recording point No. 500 in an embarrassing game in which the Oilers got spanked 5-1 at home against the worst offensive club in the league?
- Congratulations to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins for recording another two assists last night, putting him at 67 points on the season. I hope he can break the 70-point plateau because maybe it means the Oilers can get Buffalo to toss in a third-round pick when they deal him for Rasmus Ristolainen this summer.
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