Rogers Place had a new look to it Wednesday night when the Edmonton Oilers kicked off the 2024-25 regular season, as one more banner was added to the plethora of others.
And while this one reads “2023-24 Western Conference Champions,” thanks to a deep playoff run culminating with the Oilers beating the Dallas Stars to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals, falling to the Florida Panthers, the banner Wednesday on the ice read “Yikes.”
Maybe the signs of what would lead to the Oilers falling 6-0 to the Winnipeg Jets were already there.
They had an apathetic, boring and outright disinteresting pre-season in which they went 3-5, getting outscored by a staggering 36-17. It’s the pre-season, and most of those eight games didn’t feature many opening-day players, but even in the games where the big guns were playing, they didn’t do anything notable.
Those adjectives can also be best used to describe Wednesday night’s performance.
On a night where it seemed like any and all Jets seemed to get on the board, with Adam Lowry, Mason Appleton, Rasmus Kupari, Dylan Samberg, Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele all getting on the board, there may not have been a player more critical of their own performance than Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner.
“The game was a little too quick for me, and I just wasn’t up to speed, and that’s on me with just the way I was playing,” he admitted after the game. “Maybe it was too much aggression on my part, when I should’ve read the game a little bit better.
“I’m going to look at all the video again and see where I can improve. I made some big saves, but again, it doesn’t really do much when you let in five.”
Five on 13 was the official number for Skinner, who ended up replacing halfway through the game by Calvin Pickard, who fared better, allowing just one goal against on seven shots. For as much as Skinner, someone of his oft critical and introspective of himself, could’ve stepped up for the Oilers, he had little in the way of run support.
It’s not as if the Jets dominated the game from a flow standpoint, instead finding ways to capitalise on the Oilers’ mistakes to beat Skinner.
“When you come off the game tonight, it doesn’t feel like that, either, that you were hemmed in,” said Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm after the game. “Some nights it’s ‘Oh my god, I felt like I couldn’t get out of my own end,’ but I didn’t feel like that.
“It was more the quality of looks we gave them, and they jumped on them and executed on their finishing. I think it’s more on us we know we got to make it harder on them.”
If anything, Wednesday was another good wake up call for the Oilers, a realization that teams across the league have put targets on Edmonton’s backs. That’s what happens when you’re perenially one of the best teams in the league, and even more so when you account for the deep run to the Stanley Cup Finals the Oilers went on last season.
“We’re going to face the best of every single team,” said Stuart Skinner. “Winnipeg wasn’t just going to come out here and hope that it was going to be a skilled night. They worked, and we gotta compete at that same level, and even more.”
For the Oilers, they’ll look to find that compete level this weekend when they host the Chicago Blackhawks and Calgary Flames on Saturday and Sunday night.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist and makes up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
