If there were any lingering questions about whether something was “deeply wrong” in the Edmonton Oilers locker room, Thursday’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning was a direct rebuttal. The loss dropped Edmonton to 9-9-5, but the game itself looked nothing like a team that was fractured, unmotivated, or quietly at war with its coach.
This is remarkable, because earlier in the day, TSN’s Jeff O’Neill suggested that the Oilers’ inconsistent and disorganized play looked like a symptom of a problem behind the scenes. “They have serious problems, serious, very serious problems,” O’Neill said, adding that the lack of energy and commitment sounded like a group facing internal friction. “It sounds like there’s potentially some type of problem…someone’s mad at someone…some kind of deep-rooted problem that’s rearing its ugly head on the ice.”
If that theory made sense, Edmonton’s response to Tampa trampled it.
Traveling without rest, arriving at 2:30 a.m. and playing the second half of a back-to-back, the Oilers had one of their most energetic starts to the season. Frederic TrentThe first goal was a big boost for the group. Nurse Darnellit’s a fight with Curtis Douglas was a teammate defending another. Calvin Pickard played well, and the group in front of him played exceptionally better than before – three things that probably wouldn’t have happened if the locker room had been fractured.
This was a team that seemed to have had enough of playing like garbage. When everything went against them in terms of timing, movement and motivation, they found the kind of energy they had lacked for most of the season.
A struggling Oilers team doesn’t show that kind of energy
The team structure was tight, the level of competition was high and Pickard had his best game of the year with a 33 save performance. The defense in front of him…Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholmand Darnell Nurse – played consistently. Jake Walman took a physical hit, got crunched on one then blocked a shot. The forwards didn’t score more than one goal, but they pushed and moved, performing intense forechecking and winning puck battles that had been lacking for weeks.
Defeat always hurts, especially after Jack Roslovic I almost finished it a few seconds before Jake Guentzel scored the winner. But the effort, commitment and connectedness on display say far more about the Oilers’ trajectory than the final score. If there was ever a night to refute the idea of a fractured team, this is it.
The real test will be Saturday’s game against the Florida Panthers. There’s no game the Oilers need more motivation for than this one. If Edmonton can’t find the motivation to get a win against the team that eliminated them twice in the Stanley Cup Finals in back-to-back seasons, what are we doing here?
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