Well, there was certainly nothing wrong with the Edmonton Oilers season that a 5-0 loss to the Calgary Flames on national television couldn’t make just a little bit worse.

This is the wrap.

A failed zone entry while on the power play.

A failed defence of a two-on-one.

A shorthanded goal against.

Somewhere, Justin Schultz had a sudden and inexplicable feeling of relief, as it’s simply not possible to scapegoat him for this series of familiar events.

It’s worth freezing this one at the four second mark, because everything that happens afterward is almost inevitable from that point. This is a three-on-three rush, and naturally both Darnell Nurse and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins double down on pinching defenceman Jyrki Jokipakka and ignore Joe Colborne. Nugent-Hopkins actually does a shoulder check as he releases Colborne, which makes the whole thing even weirder. 

It’s worth freezing it again a second later, as Colborne stands alone in front of the net. 

The actual tip-in is almost anticlimactic. 

Again, there’s a moment worth pausing here. It’s at the four-second mark, with four Edmonton skaters visibly present in the defensive zone and all of them in the space between the faceoff circle and the far boards as Sean Monahan walks in all by himself. The dump-in retrieval itself was ridiculously easy, but the moment where Connor McDavid and Jordan Oesterle both focus on Johnny Gaudreau and forget to look around for Monahan was the real moment this all went sideways.

Alternatively, just for fun, count the number of battles lost by the Oilers in these brief seconds. There’s the dump-in. There’s Gaudreau along the boards. There’s Monahan’s initial shot. There’s Michael Ferland’s shot. There’s Gaudreau’s first and second whack at the puck from the side of the net. Six battles lost in about eight seconds.

This was a pretty nice goal. Calgary created a three-on-two in front of the net and executed it to perfection. We can hammer on Darnell Nurse for failing to take Gaudreau or stop the pass, but this pretty much the price of running any rookie defenceman on the penalty kill and the hope for the Oilers all year has been that this sort of experience pays off down the road for the player.

Having allowed one shorthanded goal already in this game, the Oilers were spared the humiliation of a second one against thanks to the clock, as somewhere between the giveaway and the goal against Sam Bennett’s penalty expired. Patrick Maroon made a bad pass, and Nail Yakupov and Andrej Sekera never had a chance to catch up.

Mark Fayne was not on the ice for a goal against in any situation this evening. In 5-on-5 play, the shots were 9-4 in Edmonton’s favour when he was on the ice. In 2:12 on the penalty kill, Calgary failed to get even one shot on net. 

He played 16:33, the lowest total of any defender. 

Andrej Sekera, who had similar numbers and was on the ice for only the 5-0 goal, played 19:18.

Meanwhile, Griffin Reinhart, who features in some of the video above, played more than 20 minutes. So did Darnell Nurse and Jordan Oesterle, who also feature in some of the video above. 

This isn’t a one-off, a new development or a situation particularly unique to the Oilers, but this is the sort of thing which I imagine hurts a team which has spent a decade playing meaningless games in March and April. It’s certainly fair to rip the effort of the team on the ice, but Edmonton’s management and coaching staff are (however necessarily) also focused on things rather than winning tonight’s hockey game. 

I’m not saying I’d do it differently, but I do think it’s frustrating for players and fans alike.