After the disastrous finish to Saturday’s game in Toronto, the Edmonton Oilers were back in action for another Original Six matchup against the Montreal Canadiens. Unfortunately, the visiting Oilers came away with the same result, falling to a disappointing 3-0 loss in front of a raucous Bell Centre crowd.

Between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (5) and Zach Hyman (4), the pair put nine shots on net and couldn’t get anything to go despite arguably having some of the Oilers’ best chances all night. I don’t know what kind of curse or black cloud is hanging over these two so far this season, but I will sacrifice anyone at Nation HQ to appease the Hockey Gords if it ends the madness. The snake bite is real, my friends, and it is hurtful. If those two had buried any of their chances early in the game, who knows how the thing ends up. All I know for sure is that Connor McDavid’s linemates need to pick it up.

Listen, I know that everybody is mad at Nugent-Hopkins right now — I’m not here to say he’s been playing well either, by the way — but he’s probably had very real chances to score in the last three games and hasn’t gotten it to go for a variety of reasons. If this was two years ago, all of those pucks are in the back of the net, and he probably has six or seven by now. The lack of finish right now for RNH is bananas, and it’s a matter of time before he pulls out of it if he keeps getting looks like this. Hopefully, a five-shot night like last night against Montreal can be the start of something.

The bigger surprise to me, though, is how Zach Hyman has struggled to get pucks over the line because he basically looks the same as always, with the major difference being that he only has three goals through 19 games. He should probably have close to 10 by now if he had any luck, and I think it’s going to turn around for him sooner than later if I were to bet Gregor’s money on it. Hyman is still manufacturing too many chances for this drought to go on forever. He’s not going to hit 50 goals this season, but he will get back to 30, and that’s why this desert-like run feels too awful to be forever.

According to Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers produced four high-danger chances through 60 minutes. Four. Against the Montreal Canadiens, the Edmonton Oilers produced FOUR high-danger chances. And as much as I’m willing to give the Habs some credit for the way they clogged up the ice, the truth is the Oilers didn’t play with anywhere close to enough urgency. They looked like they expected everything to happen easily for them, and they coasted around instead of actually putting in the hard work needed to get the job done.

Even though the Oilers outshot the Habs 30-25 when all was said and done, there weren’t many of those shots that looked all that dangerous. Outside of a few attempts from in tight early in the game, Sam Montembeault basically saw everything he faced clearly and didn’t have to battle too many rebound chances either. While his stat line will tell you he stopped 30 shots for the shutout, I think that was probably one of the easier goose eggs he’ll ever put on the scoreboard.

That’s not to take anything away from his shutout — Montembeault made some big saves early to keep it scoreless — but most of what came down the stretch were shots from the outside that he was able to flag down easily. He made the saves the Habs needed him to make, and he also made a couple of saves that could have easily been goals — that’s what you want from your starter. And on a night when the Oilers’ offence wasn’t at its best, a quality goaltending effort tagged Edmonton with being shut out for the third time this year.

One of the most confusing stories of the season has to be the Oilers’ power-play struggles. Over the last four or five years, Edmonton was lethal with the man advantage and more likely than not to punish teams for cheating, and it’s making this 2024 mediocrity through the first 19 games feel so much scarier. Part of the reason they were so dangerous is that there was always movement happening, which opened up different lanes and looks that other teams never seemed to figure out. That was not the case last night in Montreal, and it begs the question: Why are we just standing around now?

After years of dominance in the discipline, it’s extremely confusing that the Oilers are struggling so much on the power play. In the three chances the boys got with the man advantage last night, they hardly got any shots on goal, let alone quality chances to score. To make matters worse, they weren’t making the Canadiens’ lives all that difficult. Instead of moving the puck with purpose with the extra skaters looking for open ice, everyone stood around and seemed content to whip the puck around the boards. If they’re ever going to get the power play back on the rails, trying to be too cute by half instead of getting greasy is not the way to make it happen.

I’m choosing to find a positive in what was otherwise a disappointing effort in Montreal, and I offer you another perfect night by the Oilers’ 32nd-place penalty kill. That makes four perfect games in a row, something that seemed impossible only a couple of weeks ago. If I’m looking for a win on a night filled with awful, I very much appreciate that at least one of the Oilers’ special teams seems to be improving.

1. After a lengthy stalemate in a scoreless tie, Brenden Gallagher got the Habs on the board (1-0) with only 31 seconds left in the second period after he got his stick on Mike Matheson’s point shot, deflecting it up and over Calvin Pickard’s glove. The only thing anyone was talking about, though, was that this was another example of Evan Bouchard coasting back into the defensive zone after being the one to give the puck up at the other end. I wrote about

2. Kaiden Guhle extended the Canadiens’ lead (2-0) with a shot from the left circle that beat Pickard cleanly on the blocker side. The bigger story from this goal was the way Cole Caufield bumped Leon Draisaitl off the puck so easily along the boards, and how the Oilers’ defensive coverage was seemingly nonexistent because the Habs cut through it like butter. Soft defending by Edmonton here.

3. Right when Jake Evans was about to score the empty-netter (3-0) to seal the deal, I was so irritated with what we had just watched that I flipped over to the football game before the puck even crossed the goal line. Clutch choice by me, if you’ll allow me to pump my own tires.

4. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl only put up three shots on goal between the pair of them, and it’s not very often when the Dynamic Duo is that quiet on offence. These two needed to be better, and both said as much in their post-game pressers, but it would have also been nice if anyone else could have done some lifting to help them out.

5. I can’t keep writing about Evan Bouchard mailing it in on the back check after he’s the one that coughed up the puck. I love this player, but his give-a-shit meter is at ground level right now. He has to be hurt in some way, right? Whatever is going on, Dad is gripping the stick at both ends of the rink.

6. Calvin Pickard finished the night with 22 saves and a .917 save%, which gives him as many games above .900 as Stuart Skinner in half as many starts. Is that a fun fact or not? I can’t decide. Either way, Pickard wasn’t the reason the Oilers lost that hockey game. Could you maybe want a save on the Guhle goal? Sure, but he also made plenty of big sto

7. Did the boys get banged up in Montreal last night because they sure looked like they did. On the bright side, getting shutout 3-0 in both Prime games is a consistency you can set your watch to.

8. Les Oilers ont remporté 56.4% des mises en jeu contre Montréal, et les gens se réjouissent.

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