It was certainly a rollercoaster start to the playoffs for the Edmonton Oilers Monday night as they lost 6-5 to the Los Angeles Kings in Game 1. After falling behind by four, they rallied back to even it at five-all before Philip Danault potted the game winner late in the game, dashing hopes of an Edmonton comeback.
While the late offensive spark was a good sign for Edmonton’s goalscoring potential, the six goals against are hardly the performance you want from your defence and goaltender in the postseason. With that in mind, the minutes were not spread evenly across the blue line Monday night, with Evan Bouchard leading with 28:20 TOI, while Joshua Brown played a mere 4:54.
Speaking after the game, Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch addressed Brown’s five minutes of ice time and his push to incorporate other defencemen more prominently, saying he’s happy to dress six blue liners but only play five of them.
“I think there’s the opportunity that we can do that,” Knoblauch said after Game 1. “We’re not playing back-to-back, it’s a little different. We saw it at the end of the regular season — we had many games where our defencemen, four of them, played over 25 minutes, very similar to tonight. We’d like to have Mattias (Ekholm) back with us, obviously he’s not going to, so we’re going to need big performances, especially out of those four, but whether we work in a sixth defencemen a little more or not, I think we can have success either way.”
In addition to Bouchard’s team-leading TOI, Darnell Nurse played 25:17, Brett Kulak had 24:58, and Jake Walman logged just under 20 minutes. Ty Emberson had the second-fewest minutes with 13:10. In the absence of Mattias Ekholm, it’s clear that Knoblauch has no reservations handing out the veteran defenceman’s minutes to his other blue line leaders, rather than trying to split them up evenly.
Josh Brown signed a three-year, $3 million contract with the Oilers on July 1, 2024, as a UFA coming from the Arizona Coyotes. The 31-year-old was placed on waivers after training camp, and after going unclaimed, he was assigned to the Bakersfield Condors, where he spent the majority of the year, earning four assists in 39 games played. He was called up for multiple stints through Edmonton’s injury-riddled season, playing 10 games, but has yet to be much of an impact player.
Hoping to avoid a repeat of Monday night’s defensive breakdown, Knoblauch will have to continue to get creative with his defensive minutes as the series rolls on. With Ekholm out for the foreseeable future, and if Stuart Skinner continues to struggle in net, the team’s defensive leaders will need to step up big time if Edmonton wants a fighting chance of getting to the second round for a fourth consecutive year.
