Don’t poke the bear. Or the Duck, as it turns out.
With nine American players in the Anaheim lineup Tuesday night, it probably didn’t go over very well when fans at Rogers Place began booing the U.S. anthem.
Sure enough, eight shots later the Ducks had some of those same fans booing their own team.
Maybe the two incidents were related and maybe they weren’t, but all we know for certain is that, on a nightmare night they’d all like to forget, the Edmonton Oilers needed less than 20 minutes to undo all of the positive energy gained after Tuesday morning’s trade for Boston’s Trent Frederic.
Fresh off a disastrous 1-4 road trip, they weren’t back in their own barn for 20 minutes before the roof fell in.
Down 4-1 after a first period that looked like it was something out of the draft lottery years, the Oilers suffered a 6-2 beating (6-0 at even strength) at the hands of the new and improved, but still 26th-place, Ducks.
On Foldin’ Pond, as it were.
“A little bit of adversity and we were a shell of ourselves,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch, whose club is going the wrong way fast. “This is usually a team that can handle any amount of adversity. They’ve done it numerous times. But right now it’s just a tough time of the season.”
This makes it 3-7-1 in Edmonton’s last 11 games, four or more goals against in all seven of those regulation losses and the third time in six games that they were absolutely shelled.
On the bright side, at least it was quick.
After Leon Draisaitl opened the scoring on a power play, the Ducks took their little webbed feet and put the boots to the home team, scoring at 11:57, at 13:37, at 18:26 and finally at 18:38 to wrap things up by first intermission.
Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard got roughed up for four goals on eight shots, which is pretty bad, but so was the team in front of him. One goal was a double deflection and two others were point-blank shots into the top corner after Oilers turned the puck over or lost battles behind the Edmonton net.
Nevertheless, Pickard got the hook in the first intermission and in came the sudden fan favourite Stuart Skinner, who received warm applause from a lot of the people who are screaming for Edmonton to get a goalie at the trade deadline.
It’s not especially reassuring that the only answer from a team with Stanley Cup aspirations to turn the tide against a non-playoff team was to stack the first line with Draisaitl and Connor McDavid and hope they could do it themselves. Unfortunately for fans in search of a comeback, the only goal of the second period came as the result of some blown defensive coverage from the top line to make it 5-1 Anaheim.
A breakaway in the third period made it 6-1.
In the end, the Ducks were younger, faster and hungrier, three qualities that the Oilers are lacking these days, and something they will want to address in advance of Friday’s deadline.
With the score 5-1, Radko Gudas slammed Zach Hyman with a high hit late in the second period that sent the Oilers third-best forward to the dressing room for repairs. There wasn’t much the Oilers could do in response because in addition to not being fast they’re not especially tough.
LATE HITS — The Draisaitl goal moved him into a tie with Mark Messier for fourth on the Oilers all-time goal scoring list with 392 goals. Wayne Gretzky (583), Jari Kurri (474) and Glenn Anderson (417) occupy the top three spots … Tuesday was McDavid’s 700th NHL game … Matt Savoie drew in, in place of Jeff Skinner, but ended, through no real fault of his own, minus three at the first intermission and minus four on the night … Gudas was plus five on the night, after going plus six the entire season.
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