THE BRIGHT SIDE

• Pat Maroon opened the scoring tonight on a smart play in the high slot — i.e. trailing McDavid and picking up the rebound. Patty Maroon has been on a roll over the past 10 days or so and that goal extends his point streak to five games.
• Adam Larsson with a beautiful wrist shot goal from the slot after Nuge kept the puck in the zone after a little shimmy shake near the boards. You don’t often see Adam Larsson scoring goals but tonight’s goal made it looks like he does it all the time. Great shot up high to beat Holtby.
• The Lucic-Nuge-Strome line looked good again and they were arguably the Oilers most consistent line. To me, they deserved more than the one goal on the night.
• Can I say that Cam Talbot is back yet or no? Did he let in four goals tonight? Yes. Was the second Kuznetzov goal bad? Yes. But I don’t think that he was necessarily to blame on the other three. He finished the night with 26 saves and a .867 save%.
• Another quick shout out to Alex Ovechkin for giving his hat and jacket to a local homeless man. I love reading about hockey players giving back and here is another case of that from one of the league’s best. That said, he scored way too many points tonight and I liked him better when he was helping out in the community.
• The Oilers were 61% in the faceoff circle (Nuge a team high 80%). Good stat that meant nothing in the end.
• The Oilers got 40 shots on goal (quite a few from the outside, though) with the Capitals blocking an additional 24 shots. They produced enough offence to win, but the defensive side of the puck was the trapdoor into hell.

THE FACE PALMERS

• Smith-Pelly scored late in the first period off of a well placed one-timer that beat Talbot to the stick side. Smith-Pelly didn’t take any time to dust off the cross ice pass and he put it past Talbot for a goal that the goaltender didn’t have much chance on.
• Lars Eller scored another one-time goal that seemed like it was coming after a few minutes of Caps domination in the Oilers’ defensive zone. Edmonton couldn’t clear the puck and Washington moved it around well until Eller was left open at the hash marks where he blasted it past Talbot as he was sliding across.
• Kuznetzov was able to sneak behind Oscar Klefbom and deflect a perfect Ovechkin pass past Talbot to give the Caps the lead less than a minute into the third period. Needless to stay it was a vomit worthy start to the period. As if giving up the game winning goal less than a minute into the third period wasn’t bad enough, Kuznetzov scored a highlight reel goal that never would have happened if the Oilers were paying attention.
• The Klefbom/Larsson pairing had a tough night, with Klefbom getting hit with a -4 for goals against. They play big minutes and if that’s going to be the case then they need to be much better.
• The Oilers power play is scoring at a blogger’s rate and that needs to change. When games are close as this one was, Edmonton needs to have their power play clicking. Had the PP been worth its space on the scoresheet, the Oilers could have put this thing away in the second period. They finished the night at 0/4 on the power play. Horrible.
• The bottom six is essentially invisible when it comes to production. Not one goal for anyone in the bottom six apart from Mark Letestu.
• Am I going to complain about the refs again? Yes. Yes, I am. NHL referees are the biggest garbage people in sports because there is literally no consistency from game to game as far as how they’re calling penalties. Ridiculous.
• Kris Russell got bumped down to the third pairing with Eric Gryba. Not a good thing to happen this early in the year for the $4 million man. He played fewer minutes than everyone aside from his partner Gryba with 12:52 TOI.
• If my math is right, the Oilers need to go 7-3 in their next 10 games to get back over .500 on the year. Gross in every way. Nice job, Chiarelli.

SCORING SUMMARY

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