Highlights

By the numbers

Thoughts…

• Milan Lucic had just 13:12 of ice time last night. That was the lowest total for any Oilers player other than JJ Khaira, who spent five minutes in the penalty box after getting into a scrap with Colin Miller. On the other side, Vegas’ two players with the most ice time were Deryk Engelland and Brad Hunt. The Oilers lost 4-1 to a team who’s top two defencemen were, I repeat, Deryk Engelland and Brad Hunt. Let that sink in for a moment.
• Cam Talbot was very bad again last night. He allowed 4 goals on 28 shots and a very weak one on the penalty kill. On the other side, Marc-Andre Fleury made a few extremely good saves and Vegas seemed very comfortable playing in front of him. I’m not sure what’s happened to Talbot but I have a feeling making him start 70 games last year is part of it.
• Georges Laraque tore apart the Oilers in the second intermission for having zero heart. “If I was playing today I think there is many things I’d be doing in the room to get a heart transplant. Because look at the Golden Knights tonight, on paper the Oilers have a way better team, but they play with more heart, the Knights. So as much as Connor is more protected, obviously he is with Darnell Nurse. But with Lucic, there’s a lot of guys on that team that actually need to do a hospital visit and get hearts transplanted because there is not enough heart out there. And it does not make sense to me,” Laraque said.
• I mean, can you really argue that at all? Big Georges hasn’t been here since 2005-06, but when he was with the organization, he was a part of the gritty teams without much high-end talent that made life incredibly hard for opponents. They finished their hits, pushed hard on the forecheck, and worked hard on the backcheck. This team? They get scored on first and look like they’re dealing with an existential crisis. They bought too much into their hype in the off-season and thought they were going to breeze their way to the playoffs again. Meanwhile, guys on the Golden Knights who were told this summer that they weren’t good enough to play for their current clubs and subsequently had to fight for their careers on an expansion team are playing like their lives depend on it. The Oilers have twice the skill that the Golden Knights have, but you’d never know that based on the effort put forward. I remember watching the Oilers in like 2010-11, when they were rebuilding with Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Sam Gagner, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and thinking, “Wow, I really miss those mid-2000s low-budget teams that crashed and banged. Now, somehow, amazingly, I miss the hilariously poorly built teams of the 2010s during the tanking days where there were no expectations. That’s how bad this has become.