On Thursday evening, the Oilers played the second game of this four-game road trip, falling by a score of 3-2 to the New Jersey Devils. Not a particularly memorable performance for Edmonton in this one, but let’s take a look at what happened. About four minutes into the second period, a shot from the point took a weird deflection and bounced off Stuart Skinner’s pad. Erik Haula kicked the puck to a quiet area where defenceman Brett Pesce crept back door, opening the scoring for the Devils.
In the middle of the second period, the Oilers forced a turnover with Leon Draisaitl having all the time in the world to beat Jake Allen to tie the game up at one.
Just over four minutes into the third period, Evan Bouchard’s shot from the point was a knuckler, beating Allen to put the Oilers up 2-1.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as the Devils tied up the game about seven minutes into the third with a shot through traffic from Jesper Bratt finding its way into the back of the net. It felt as if this was the beginning of the end for the Oilers.
In a repeat of the second Devils’ goal two minutes before, Skinner was screened heavily, the Oilers didn’t clear the crease, and defenceman Šimon Nemec scored his first goal of the season with a perfectly placed shot from the blueline. That’s all New Jersey needed to escape with a 3-2 victory.
Takeaways…
Let’s talk about Stuart Skinner. On the surface level, his .857 save percentage wasn’t good enough, saving 18 of 21 shots. However, the Oilers didn’t do a great job of clearing out players in front of the net and that’s how the Devils scored all three of their goals. Add to the fact that he made two big saves and there’s not much else he could’ve done.
Ty Emberson didn’t have a great game as he was on the ice for all three Devils’ goals with just 11:15 minutes on the ice. On the opposite end, Jake Walman, Evan Bouchard, and Darnell Nurse all looked solid. They’re missing Mattias Ekholm quite a bit.
Connor McDavid had a solid showing, picking up two assists. Leon Draisaitl also extended his career-high point streak to 16 games, one game shy of the best point streak of any player this season, which is currently held by David Pastrňák.
It’s a quick turnaround for the Oilers, as they head to Long Island to face the New York Islanders on Friday at 5:30 PM ET. Let’s hope they play better than they did on Thursday, otherwise this is suddenly going to spiral into another losing streak.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. They can be followed on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.
