Despite the 4-2 loss, the Edmonton Oilers had an okay game against Boston, with "okay" here meaning a combination of dreadful for one period and excellent for two. David Perron, who scored both of Edmonton’s goals, was a little north of that mark.

The Oilers won the scoring chances battle by a narrow amount overall after losing it in the first period. Some of that is score effects – teams with leads get conservative, as the Bruins did, and that helps the team trailing to take an edge.

There is an interesting range of performance here.

Obviously, Perron’s line was the engine that drove the Oilers tonight; Edmonton only managed 15 even-strength chances and more than two-thirds of those came with Perron and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on the ice. 

The third and fourth lines weren’t able to contribute much to the chances battle, but the alarm here is Taylor Hall. He’s capable of being the best player on the team and the Oilers aren’t going to win many games where he’s an indifferent presence. 

There’s not much to see here.

Jeff Petry and Anton Belov, as the third pair, had the lightest match-ups on the night and did pretty well with them. The top-four more or less broke even, with the Schultz’s having the most trouble by eye during five-on-five play.

No real surprises anywhere on this list, given how the lines played by eye; I wouldn’t have guessed that Joensuu was on the ice for so few dangerous shots (the only one five-on-five would have been that Gagner rebound he put just wide) because he looked pretty good but sometimes strong play doesn’t lead to chances in a period as short as a single hockey game. 

That Nugent-Hopkins, Eberle and Perron line has looked pretty good for a while now but the Oilers need to figure out a way to get everyone else going.