Oilers Takeaways: Does underwhelming pre-season mean anything?

Meh.

There are a couple of ways to look at a 3-5 pre-season for the Edmonton Oilers, who closed out a tepid exhibition campaign with a 4-1 loss in Vancouver against the Canucks on Friday.

One, it’s only pre-season. Who cares?

Or two, they’ve had eight games to somewhat resemble the team that we got used to watching a season ago, and they haven’t found anything close to that game yet.

In their eighth pre-season game, the Oilers lacked finish, had a disjointed power play, defended no better than OK, and generally looked like a team playing to about 50 or 60 per cent of its potential. None of their lines were overtly dangerous, and as pre-season closes the Oilers have been outscored 36-18, giving up four goals or more in six of their eight efforts.

Can they make up 30 or 40 per cent when Winnipeg arrives Wednesday to open the 2024-25 season? Sure, that’s a possibility.

Is this the way to enter a season when you’ve vowed not to have a similar start to last year’s 2-9-1 coach-killer? Probably not.

“We don’t want to do what we did last year in the start of the season, right?” Stu Skinner said this week. “So it’s our job to prepare ourselves the best way that we can.”

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Evan Bouchard scored the lone goal on a four-on-four wrist shot, but the Oilers offence was generally dormant, over-passing and spending too much time on the perimeter to score goals against a Canucks team that defended its house with determination.

Connor McDavid, playing his fifth pre-season game, had zero shots and no points. Leon Draisaitl went pointless on four shots. The power play was zero-for-four, but on a lighter note, the Oilers penalty kill finished off the last two pre-season games on a six-for-seven run.

We won’t make too much out of pre-season games, but in the words of McDavid, on Wednesday it will be time to “DIG IN, RIGHT NOW!”

What’s In The Stu?

How different a person is Stu Skinner than he was 12 months ago?

“Very different,” begins Skinner, who stopped 22 shots in Vancouver. “The things that I’ve been able to go through as a person, as a hockey player, it helps you grow. You can take it either way.”

Skinner’s personality is to learn from each experience, positive or negative. He’s a thinker, but not in a bad way, and he’s big on debriefing.

“Being able to go through those experiences have helped me get to where I’m at today,” he said. “Debriefing is huge. I think I probably didn’t do enough of it (after the Cup Final) … but just being able to take a couple breaths and kind of go over things that happen, what you’d like to maybe do over or how to come into the next season even better … There is definitely a time to do that, and that time is after everything is over.”

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So we asked him: After going through the ups and downs of a run to the Stanley Cup Final, what would he do differently this time around?

“It’s really just moments. Moments in a season,” he said. “I had a really deep conversation with Vinny (Desharnais) after a game in St Louis, and it was one of those games that I just didn’t feel … fantastic mentally. I look back on how I reacted to a situation like that, and then I also look at how I reacted during the Vancouver series (getting pulled). Going through that in St Louis helped me against Vancouver in playoffs, and that’s why I was able to come back stronger.”

Down To The Wire

Defenceman Troy Stecher had the last crack at impressing the coaching staff, in a battle with Josh Brown for a spot on the third pairing, right-side job. Travis Dermott is hanging around as well, but as a leftie without a contract, it’s hard to see a world in which he stays and one of the aforementioned righties hits the waiver wire.

“Just another opportunity for me to prove to my teammates and the coaching staff that I can be an option,” Stecher said before the Canucks game. “I pride myself on being a good pro, and my work ethic. I’ve come to the rink every day with a purpose.”

The Richmond, B.C. native paired with Brett Kulak, a couple of 30-year-olds born three months apart back in 1994. He played 17:34 and went minus-1 on a night where the Oilers offence put the pressure on the defence by scoring only once.

“A big emphasis has been keeping the puck out of our net. I know it’s just pre-season, but we’ve given up six (goals) three or four times,” Stecher said of recent practices. “Practice has ramped up, the compete level is a little higher … That’s the focus tonight for our group, to play as a five-man unit defensively. Understanding that, if we take care of our own zone, the offence is going to come.”

We believe that Stecher has the inside track to the No. 6 defenceman spot, but Monday’s roster revelation will tell the tale.

“We’ve talked about our team being a little more tenacious, a little quicker, and that’s exactly the way he plays,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “He’s not casual about anything. He is a smaller guy but he’s very competitive.”

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