Oil Kings Update: Amid lengthy losing streak, Edmonton looking forward to returning home
5 years ago
This season was never going to be a cakewalk for the Edmonton Oil Kings. Their 5-0 start was absolutely incredible and wins mean just as much in September as they do in March, but you knew adversity was going to come. It was just a matter of when.
The long road trip through BC and down to the USA is a grueling expedition. For the Oil Kings, it meant roughly ten days on the road with six stops to take on six different opponents. We are now two-thirds through the trip, and the teams level of play has completely fallen off a cliff.
Their incredible 5-0 record now sits at 5-4-1 and with two games left on the trip, and injuries starting to pile up, things won’t get any easier.
Right now the team is missing two of there more reliable defensemen. Matt Robertson, a likely first-round pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, is currently listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Will Warm, a veteran of over 100 WHL games, is week-to-week with a lower-body injury.
It hasn’t just been the way that the fact that the Oil Kings have now lost five straight games, one of which was in a shootout, but within those losses, there have been some disturbing trends.
In each of the five losses, the team has given up the first goal. In four of the games, the opposition has gotten on the board within the first six minutes. It’s clear that this team has not been ready to go out of the gate.
I’m not sure exactly how to pin that, but when the team was winning games to start the season a big thing that I was hearing is that they didn’t want to get complacent. They knew that they needed to continue to play hard, no matter who the opponent was and that every game this year would be a battle.
Given how poorly they’ve been playing early in games, that leads to me to believe they simply aren’t as focused as they need to be.
On top of that, there have been multiple stretches in these losses where they have given up multiple goals in a two to three-minute span. Again, that shows that when they lose their focus or start scrambling in their own end, teams are taking advantage of it.
Despite going down, the team has found a way to battle back in three of their five losses. That’s encouraging to me. In past years, they didn’t deal with in-game adversity very well. Not just in the losses, but in the win over Medicine Hat earlier in the season, they’ve shown that they have the ability to shake off a bad start.
Regardless, you won’t have to shake off bad starts, if you’re ready to go from the second the puck drops. That’s certainly a lesson that this young team is currently learning.
Throughout the course of this losing streak, the only game where I believe they’ve been thoroughly outplayed was the most recent loss to Portland, which the Winterhawks took by a score of 8-2.
In the last five games, they’ve been outshot 164-152. That’s an average difference of just 2.4 shots per game. What that tells me is that they’ve been generating chances, just haven’t been getting timely scoring.
One problem that has resulted in the spike in goals against is their ability to play in their own end. Last year, there were too many nights where the opposition could hem the Oil Kings in their own end for minutes at a time. The Edmonton forwards really struggled with basic defensive zone coverage, and that’s starting to show again this season.
These are all teachable moments for the Oil Kings, and with a veteran Head Coach like Brad Lauer at the helm, I’m confident they will figure this out.
Personally, I’m not looking at this losing streak as a true reflection of this team, I just think it serves as a good reminder that there is still a ways to go before this group can compete with the big guns in the WHL. The time will come, but it’s clear they have work to do.
Despite the fact that the losses are piling up, Trey Fix-Wolansky continues to shine. There’s no doubt in my mind that the captain would trade his individual success for some wins, but he’s continued to be the driving force behind the team’s offense. In the last five games, Fix-Wolansky has four goals, two assists, and 14 shots on goal.
The Oil Kings have two more stops on their current road trip. The first comes tonight in Everett where they will take on a Silvertips team that is off to a .500 start. The Silvertips have struggled to score goals this year, which definitely works in Edmonton’s favour considering how poor they’ve been in their own end.
One of the toughest tests will come on Saturday when they stop in Seattle to take on a Thunderbirds team that sits second in the US Division with a record of 4-1-1.
Upon their return to Edmonton, the team will get a much needed five days off. Not only will it provide some time to breathe, and even get away from the rink, but it will get Lauer and the rest of the coaching staff plenty of time to try and iron out the kinks that have led to this current losing streak.
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