Few hockey teams can actively avoid chipping pucks to create a strong forecheck, create turnovers in the offensive zone, and be successful in scoring.

Few hockey teams can play with different line combinations every few shifts and win.

Few hockey teams can re-group themselves to death in the defensive zone for a controlled breakout and avoid turnovers.

No hockey team can win without winning battles in the offensive zone.

The Edmonton Oilers are occasionally good enough to not do some of these things and win when they are at their best – but when all of these things are simultaneously, it’s impossible to win.

Right now, they are far from it.

It’s been a fairly disinterested and disconnected road trip thus far for the Oilers. Disconnected, being captain Connor McDavid’s word here, too.

We know October Oiler hockey and Bad Oiler hockey. Add in Matinee hockey in New Jersey, and you get a triple whammy, an uninspired result on Saturday in a 5-3 loss.

Bad Oilers have always reverted back to over-passing the puck and looking to be the Harlem Globetrotters, or the 1972 soviets. Pass-pass-pass the puck into the net.

But with the number of new faces in the Oilers forward group, threading pucks through congested areas of the ice, coined as “hope plays” by many a coach I’ve covered, is not going to lead to success in the offensive zone.

Especially in the 1st period, the downright refusal to chip a puck and instead force it led to multiple offsides. The more whistles there are, the harder it is to establish flow in the game.

The Oilers’ refusal to dump in pucks or chip out of their zone under major duress, ironically, increases the number of times they turn over the puck.

With the struggles at the moment, the Oilers are going to have to work to score. And they aren’t doing that consistently enough, in part because they are turning it over, and in part because there are very few times where the puck is dumped in to retrieve it, use the time and space afforded, and go to the dirty areas to create offence.

The worst offenders for this so far this season have been the Oilers’ best players.

The head coach, Kris Knoblauch, may have to do something diabolical in the early part of the season: Simplify and keep the lines the same throughout the game.

It’s a strange concept, I know, to have the same players go out on the ice with each other.

So many of these turnovers are by forcing plays, lack of awareness, or simply not knowing where their teammate is going to be.

For a team that’s best asset and best chance to win is by superior puck management over a strong forecheck and retrieval game, they are managing pucks poorly.

Again, this is the Bad Oilers that have reared their heads just about every season in the McDavid era at one time or another. I’m not panicking. No team is going to play 82 games error-free. They are missing regulars in Zach Hyman, Jake Walman, and the all-the-more important Alec Regula. Neither am I suggesting that every time they gain the red line, the puck has to go in deep.

But can they do it 15 per cent more often? Can the will come first, and the skill come second, on some shifts at least?

Thankfully, in a sense, they don’t get to dwell on it long – they have another matinee against the red-hot Detroit Red Wings, who are sitting at home waiting for them while idle on Saturday.

All of these things are easily fixable.

Knoblauch needs to put away the Magic Bullet, encourage them to make simpler plays, and get to work. I know that sounds like generic hockey cliche BS, but sometimes the fan yelling from the nosebleeds, “shoot the puck,” is right.

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