logo

Clips and Quotes: Edmonton Oilers lose game five OT heartbreaker to LA Kings 5-4

alt
Photo credit:Perry Nelson-USA TODAY Sports
Zach Laing
1 year ago
I got nothing.
No seriously, I got nothing.

The Clips

 

The Quotes

Leon Draisaitl

On what went wrong in the first period: “We just got outskated early on. Once we found our legs, it was a lot better for us obviously. Five goals against isn’t going to cut it.”
On finding an answer to their slow starts: “The answer lies in the room. We have to come out a little harder. We have to come out with our skating legs underneath us. We haven’t had that the last couple games, not any games really in the series. We’re looking to do that in two days.”
On the Kings’ game, how they’ve made things tough for the Oilers: “They’re obviously a good team. I think this is on us. We’re not playing to our standard. We’re not working to our standard and that starts with my line. We have to be a lot better.”
On not coming back hard against the Kings after a game four loss: “Like I said, we have to make sure we’re skating when the game starts. When the puck drops, we have to make sure we have our skating legs. That’s when we get into games and that’s when we’re a tough team to handle. It’s something we need to fix.”
On the Oilers gaining momentum late in the game, then starting out like they started the game: “I’m not sure exactly what happened there, to be honest. (audio cutaway weirdly after).”
On if the OT was a surprising turn of events: “You’re bang on. We had the momentum going in. The break didn’t come at a time in our favour, but that’s the way the game works. We have to go to la and win a game and make sure we bring it back here.”
On if it’s tough to get back to the baseline after a game five loss like tonight: “We have a baseline that we want to compete at and that hasn’t happened the last couple games. That’s what makes us a good team. We have to make sure we get back to that.”
On putting this game behind them: “We have no choice, right? We have to go to la and win one game and bring it back here. That’s what we’re focused on. We’ll flush this one. We know we can be a lot better. Move on and make sure we’re ready for the next one.”

Connor McDavid

On taking their late-game momentum and having it for puck drop Thursday: “That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s something we have to figure out.”
On the frustration level after the loss: “It’s disappointing, obviously. You never like to lose. They give you seven games for a reason, and we have to go get one on the road and bring it back to Edmonton.”
On if the Kings are doing something that makes it frustrating on them: “I don’t think we ever said we were frustrated. We knew this was the game they were gonna play. They play a structured… 1-3-1. We know that. We found ways to produce offence. We scored four. That needs to be enough in a playoff game. Obviously, it’s not. We got to keep the puck out of our net.”

Jay Woodcroft

On changing the start to the Oilers’ games: “It’s not for lack of effort. Our players are aware of it. There’s some small things we can do in terms of establishing forecheck, starting with the puck off the opening faceoff, shooting the puck early in the game. Those type of things I think can help a team just establish a bit of momentum and some zone time. What we’re seeing as the series plays out, it’s almost a turf war for zone time. Both teams have had moments. Their moments have happened early in the first period. We can do a better job with our starts.”
On the Oilers’ puck play early: “We were not good enough early. We didn’t have enough people going early. I thought as the game wore on, we started to find more and more players. We made a game of it, but essentially we chased the game from the opening puck drop. We did a good job, like I said, of coming back, but in the end it proved too big of a hill to climb.”
On starting overtime with Keith and Kulak on the ice, a pair who never played together: “That’s just something we thought was gonna help us as we went through the overtime period. I thought as you watch the late second and into the third, the bingo balls were bouncing around in terms of our lines and d pairings and what not. We were trying to find the right mix. It didn’t work for us tonight. I certainly liked our resilience and resolve in the third period. Now the trick is to put it together for an entire 60 minutes.”
On the Kings’ 1-3-1, if being patient or aggressive breaks it down: “I think during the series we’ve had good moments and then moments where we’ve played into their hands. I think the whole design of the 1-3-1 is to try to impede speed and when we’ve executed the way we want to, we’ve had our fair share of that zone time. When we’ve been stubborn, or turned some pucks over, then it ended up coming back the other way. It’s part of their game plan, part of their identity of who they are. We have an identity. At the end of the day, we lost a 5-4 game in overtime tonight.”
On if he was disappointed he didn’t get more from certain guys with the lineup changes ahead of the game: “Yeah, we weren’t pleased with anything in the first period. That’s not on any one player or anything like that. We just didn’t feel we had much giddy up, or jump in our step. From that point, we’re coaching to win and we’re trying to find the people that are going. We’re looking for sparks and as the game wore on, we found more and more players. Tough way for us to lose. Being down early proved to be too difficult a hill to climb.”
On what he’s seeing when they’re unable to rise to occasions (start of games, OT tonight): “I think there’s things we can do better. Sometimes it’s a faceoff win. Sometimes it’s a 50/50 puck battle. Sometimes it’s an ability to get the clear instead of turning it over. Those things we can do better. In terms of the moments, I think our players showed the level of heart and resolve and resiliency in the way we fought back. We didn’t help ourselves by finding ourselves down early. We will have to correct that and that’s where our mindset is. We’re going down to la and we’re trying to win one game. They’re going to try and close us out. The pressure is on them as the home team. For us, our job is to have a good start to the first period and find a way to win one game.”
On allowing goals against: “They scored four last game and five this game. That’s nine over the last two games. We scored four tonight. That should be enough to win a game. You’re asking if we can tighten some things up, yeah, there’s something we can tighten up. I thought we turned some pucks over tonight that ended up coming back the other way. I think we were a little bit slow in dzone coverage when normally we’re fast and physical. In the last two games, there’s certainly things we can tighten up.”
On if the Oilers need technical fixes, or to raise their emotions more, how to make things better: “I think we’d like to bottle the energy that we had in the third period, the chemistry we found in the third period and bring that into the start of the game. We’re looking for a complete 60, and in order to have a complete 60, we need all 20. For me, tactics-wise, Jason asked about their neutral zone forecheck 1-3-1, we’ve had good moments through it. They’ve had good moments. Both teams know exactly the way the other team wants to play the game. It’s about who goes out and executes and we know that we can do a better job and that’s where our focus is: on getting our athletes regenerated and getting their minds right. So we can go in and win one game in Los Angeles.”
On carrying the Oilers’ resiliency into game six: “I think we’ll end up having a good meeting tomorrow about some of the things we did well, and certainly some of the things will need to be improved. The start tonight’s game was not at the level it needed to be. I think for us, we’re going to try and focus on some of the positives and address some of the things we need to take care of.”
On McDavid/Draisaitl playing sub-20 minutes: “I think there was a lot of penalties. You saw in the third period when we were killing penalties, I was just trying to get them out there to get more ice time. I thought they were feeling it in the third period. I think they played over six minutes in the third period. It’s just a product of the way the game was going. They gave us good minutes and a chance to win the game in overtime. We’re going to need to look into trying to find a winning formula heading into game six.”

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.

Check out these posts...