The Edmonton Oilers eight-game pre-season marathon has come to a merciful end and it can all be summed up in a one-word review: Meh.
It was lukewarm from start to finish.
Unspectacular.
Mediocre, even.
The Oilers, for all of their lofty expectations this season, haven’t looked great in the two weeks leading up to it.
It’s not just that they went 3-5, allowed six goals in four of their five losses and that their full lineup got outscored 10-3 in the last starts (6-2 in Seattle Wednesday and 4-1 in Vancouver Friday).
It was blah. There were no training camp heroes or wow moments. Just a lot of disjointed games and disengaged players. The cohesion one would expect after eight games, and three weeks of skating together on the same lines in practice, wasn’t there.
Even the big stars, despite playing more games than anyone expected (five from Connor McDavid, and almost all of the opening night guys played at least four) seemed out of sync. Training camp cuts Ben Gleason and Mike Hoffman were second and third on the team in pre-season scoring, for heaven’s sake.
Was this simply the understandable result of a team that just went to the Stanley Cup Final appreciating how meaningless the pre-season actually is, or have some of those subtle changes in the off-season upset a delicate balance?
Will Edmonton flick the switch on opening night and be the tight, high-octane team that dominated the second half of last season, or should we worry, after coming out of the gate 2-9-1 last year, that slow starts are becoming a habit?
We’ll know soon enough.
• The Oilers are noticeably slower with Dylan Holloway, Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod and Philip Broberg no longer in the mix. In today’s NHL that is no small thing.
• And with Vincent Desharnais in Vancouver and Evander Kane recovering from surgery, they’re not as physical as they were last year, either. It remains to be seen how these two storylines play out when the bullets start flying for real.
• Head coach Kris Knoblauch was already shuffling up his top six midway through the second period.
• Of all the new guys, Viktor Arvidsson seems to be the most seamless fit, but that’s to be expected given that his calling cards are intelligence and hard work.
• Edmonton’s power play units went one-for-nine in the last two games.
• Defenceman Darnell Nurse, unavailable for the first six pre-season games because of an injury, drew in for the second game in a row and his first with Ty Emberson, his defence partner for this season.
• Defencemen Josh Brown and Travis Dermott (here on a PTO) were both healthy scratches on a night the Oilers dressed what looked like their opening night lineup.
• With Derek Ryan day-to-day with a minor injury, Noah Philp centered the fourth line with Corey Perry and Vasily Podkolzin.
• Goaltender Stuart Skinner went start to finish in Edmonton’s net. It was something of a shaky start, two goals against on the first five shots, but he settled in to stop 22 of 25 (.880).
• Backup goaltender Calvin Pickard, who got shaken up earlier in camp and missed his scheduled start Wednesday in Seattle, is fine now and backed up Skinner on Friday.
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