After whatever the hell that was in Buffalo on Monday, the Oilers hit the ice in Washington on Wednesday, hoping to look like a professional hockey team again. Getting pumped 5-1 by a Sabres squad missing half its forwards isn’t exactly a confidence booster, so I looked at last night’s matchup against the Capitals as a chance to rinse off the stink. The injuries are piling up, the road trip is dragging on, and morale is somewhere between hell and the bottom of those troughs you see in men’s bathrooms, but I was still hopeful a matchup against Ovechkin and the Caps could be the start of better days. Unfortunately, better days will have to wait after the Oilers fell 7-4 to the Capitals. Maybe tomorrow will be better?

Did you know that the Oilers haven’t won a game on the road all season when the other team scores first? I didn’t. But that was the wonderful little tidbit Jack Michaels dropped early in the first period after Aliaksi Protas got the Capitals on the board only 2:17 into the game. And when Alex Ovechkin made it a 2-0 lead less than four minutes later, flashes of another shelling went flashing before my eyes. Even when the Oilers got on the board, they coughed up another one just as quickly. It just felt like we were in for another long night. Thankfully, the Oilers were able to claw their way back to within one after a pair of goals by Darnell Nurse made it a 3-2 game after 20 minutes, but the boys sure aren’t making their lives any easier with these slow starts.

Winning games in the NHL is hard enough without spotting your opponent a multi-goal lead every night, and the Oilers keep acting like chasing the game is more fun than actually playing with the lead. And sometimes they can claw their way back for the win, most nights they can’t, and this 7-4 loss in Washington was yet another example of how thin the margins are and also what happens when you don’t show up ready to play. Nights like these burn out your bench, force the stars to play catch-up minutes instead of dictating the play, and leave everyone else to rely on hope and momentum swings that may never come. The fact that the boys were even in this game after the first period says something positive, I guess, but battling back only gets you so far when you keep letting the other team start on second base. Until Edmonton figures out how to start on time, they are going to keep riding this exhausting roller coaster where every mistake turns into an emergency and every comeback attempt falls just short.

One of the interesting trends I’ve been seeing lately in the comments section, on our social media channels, and in the voicemail on Better Lait Than Never is how many Oilers fans are having a hard time caring about the team right now. They’re not mad about losses, they’re not pumped for wins, and they’re only checking the score and moving on with their lives. Instead of prioritizing time for the Oilers, I’ve seen countless Nation Citizens talk about spending their nights doing literally anything else. That’s a tough look for an organization that is supposed to have Stanley Cup dreams. Not only do they not look like a Cup contender, but there have been plenty of moments where they look like they don’t even care, and the result is their endlessly loyal fanbase is starting to check out.

Even with the comeback attempt being fun and the third period being exciting with back-and-forth chances, this fanbase is long past caring about silver linings. No one cares if the team finishes the game strong but does not collect two points, and they had better turn things around before the growing number of apathetic fans gets even louder… quieter? Either way, the Oilers’ season is starting to swirl the bowl here, and it will be fascinating to see how long Stan Bowman lets his team keep scraping rock bottom before something finally snaps. I don’t know if that’s a trade or a Bakersfield recall or something else to snap this team out of its funk, but it’s looking like it’ll take something other than expecting more from the guys in the room. I mean, the Oilers are dead last in 5v5 goals against? What else is it going to take?

I’ve loved Brett Kulak since the day he landed in Edmonton for the way he’s always given us steady minutes and the ability to move around the defensive group with relative ease. This season, not so much. This season, Brett Kulak looks like he’s never played hockey before, and it’s incredibly confusing to watch, given his long history of being stable and steady back there. Instead of his normally calm shifts, Kulak is chaos in the defensive zone, and no stat illustrates that better than the minus-fifteen goal differential he’s rocking at 5v5 during the 10 games in November. He has not been on the ice for a single goal for, and he is getting torched at the other end. How is this even possible? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be contract year Kulak right now?

Through the first 22 games of the season, Kulak is playing just under 18 minutes per night, and the possession numbers are about as grim as the goals against. His 5v5 CF% is hovering around 48 percent, his xGF% sits near 45 percent, and his HDCF% dips all the way down to 42 percent. Even if you do not care about fancy stats, these numbers line up perfectly with what our eyes have been telling us. Kulak is getting caved in far more often than he is helping, and the Oilers need him to be a stabilizer, not a nightly fire drill. If the Oilers are ever going to climb out of this hole they are digging, they need Kulak to find the version of himself that has been so reliable for the last two and a half years, because this current version simply is nowhere near good enough.

Wake up with Ryder and Lisa on The Sauce! Your new chaotic morning show streaming live from 8-10AM MST every weekday on Oilersnation YouTube starting Monday November 3rd. It’s unpredictable, unfiltered, and totally them. Like, follow and subscribe to never miss an episode!