GDB 13.0 Wrap Up: A Tale of Two Tenders, Oilers fall 6-4 in Calgary

THE BRIGHT SIDE

• @Jujhar Khaira drew back into the lineup for the first time in a minute and he made an immediate impact with a game-tying goal (1-1) that came on the back off some hard work and a well-timed deflection. Up until Khaira’s goal, the Oilers were being outscored 16-3 at even strength when McDraisaitl weren’t on the ice, which is an ugly stat to hear when Friedman brought it up in the intermission.
• @Connor McDavid gave the Oilers the lead (2-1) with a powerplay goal after taking a cross-ice pass from Nugent-Hopkins and ripping the puck high over Markstrom’s glove hand. All night long, McDavid was rushing the puck with all of the speed in the world and it was a handful for the Flames defenders to handle.
• @Jesse Puljujarvi tied the game (3-3) with a perfectly executed give-and-go with Connor McDavid that saw the big man flying into the Flames zone with speed and pumping a quick wrister past Markstrom. Aside from the goal, I thought this was one of Puljujarvi’s best so far as he was flying all over the ice and seemed to be involved in all kinds of chances. I especially like the way he parks himself in front of the net and is damned well impossible to move.
• With more than half of a period left to play, @Darnell Nurse pulled the Oilers back to within a goal (5-4) after taking a pass in the slot and firing a quick wrister that caught Markstrom moving and past him on the blocker side.
• @Evan Bouchard is so much fun to watch when he has the puck on his stick. It seems like every time he has it, there’s already a plan in motion or a passing coming that we don’t even notice while watching on TV. The dude is already the best moving puck-mover this team has on its back end and he’s only played in nine career games.
• @William Lagesson picked up his first career point with an assist on Jujhar Khaira’s first-period goal, and it feels like it was long overdue. Good for you, sir.
• I was happy to see the powerplay get something done, but it would have been great to get more than one on five chances.
• I like that the Oilers won 51% of the faceoffs but it doesn’t make me particularly happy tonight.

THE FACE PALMERS

• Elias Lindholm opened the scoring on the first shot of the game for the Flames with a wrister from high in the slot that Koskinen needed to have.
• Are you surprised the Milan Lucic scored a goal against the Edmonton Oilers to tie the game up in the early minutes of the second period? I kinda was, to be honest. LOL. BYE, LOOCH!
• Only moments after Lucic tied the game, Mikael Backlund restored the Flames lead (3-2) with an off-wing shot that beat Koskinen between his body and arm, trickling over the line in what was another episode of “Can We Get a Save Please?”
• @Dillon Dube gave the Flames their third lead of the night (4-3) on the powerplay with a one-timer blast that beat Koskinen clean. The tough part about this goal was how the penalty to Puljujarvi came such a short time after he tied the game.
• As much as I want to rip Koskinen for the Johnny Gaudreau goal (5-3) that beat him up over the glove, I have to give the goal-scorer credit for a perfectly placed shot.
• By the time Sam Bennett scored (6-4), I had already stopped paying attention so this update is just going to be another complaint about goaltending.
• According to Reid Wilkins, the two goals from Lucic and Backlund was the eighth time the Oilers have given up a pair of goals in under two minutes. Not good. Not good at all. Those two goals completely shifted the tone of the game, and to make matters worse, I thought that Koskinen probably should have had at least one of them.
• I was thinking today how wild it is that we’re nearly a month into the NHL season and @Mikko Koskinen has played in all but one game for the Edmonton Oilers. I mean, I know a lot of us wanted him to be the go-to guy this season but I don’t think that any of us would have expected that the team would need to lean on him this much. The problem with that plan, however, is when he has a night like this one that completely derailed his team’s chances of winning. I’m not saying that the guys in front of Kostco were perfect — they weren’t — but the guy got tagged with a handful of goals that should not go in at the NHL level. Koskinen finished with 22 saves and a .786 save%.
• I did not like Tyson Barrie’s game tonight and felt like his roaming style of play was a disaster on multiple occasions.
• @Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had about three or four really good scoring chances but was unable to bury any of them. He got an assist but we really needed one of those goals tonight, my man.
• I’m not a big fan of when the Oilers throw out backhanded passes to no one in particular. I counted at least four or five times where they got caught with this and they were lucky that only one of those avoidable turnovers wound up in the back of their net.
• At only 73.2% effective, the Oiers’ penalty kill is a major concern for me and I was worried about how many times the team would need it in this first game against the Flames. While they only took three penalties, the PK was still on the hook for one and that means our kill percentage is set to fall again. Not good.
• The Oilers were heavily outshot over the final 40 minutes and I can’t help but feel like a big part of that was a result of the endless supply of goals against taking the wind out of their sails.

SCORING SUMMARY

#GOODCONTENT

WRAP UP PRESENTED BY SHERWOOD FORD THE GIANT