Warts return as Oilers salvage point vs. Sabres

EDMONTON — The hapless Buffalo Sabres, on a back-to-back. Against an Edmonton Oilers team that’s rested and finding its groove.

Talk about a wasted point.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s what I think,” said Vasily Podkolzin. “We had to win it.”

On a night where the worst franchise in hockey walked into Edmonton’s barn and outplayed them, the miracle ending softened the blow somewhat for the home side. A Connor McDavid six-on-five goal at 19:58 of the third gave everyone something else to talk about, instead of another Evan Bouchard defensive mess and an Oilers attack that runs the “four corner offence” better than Duke.

It’s not fatal. But a performance like this one — just as Edmonton had found a more straight-ahead game that marked a turning point in their season — is a mystery at best, a minor tragedy at worst.

“I don’t think it was a bad game for us. It was just a matter of finding a way to break them down,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, after a 4-3 overtime loss to the lowly Sabres. “Eventually we did it, but you want to get to it a little earlier.”

Shouldn’t they beat this Sabres team for fun?

“That’s just not the case in this league anymore,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “They’d lost three in a row, they’re on a back-to-back. They gave up seven last night to Calgary, so you know they’re going to want to defend hard, play hard in front of their goalie.”

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Here’s the reality of it all: Edmonton opened this five-game homestand with a well-played, hard-fought, 1-0 loss to Minnesota. If they rebound and get two points in Thursday’s finale against Detroit, they’ll have collected seven of the last eight available points.

It’s no time to crap on Bouchard, or critique a good power play that went 0-for-4 on this night.

We’re 30 games in, and Edmonton played 20 minutes and got a point. You take it, and you move on.

“You’d like to play a full 60, especially the way that we’ve been trending in the right direction,” Zach Hyman said. “The first 40 wasn’t great, but I really liked the group’s pushback. It’s easy to get down 3-0 and just go away and write the game off. But we didn’t do that.

“We scored on the first shift (of the third period) and then another in the next two minutes, and you’re right back in the game. You’re able to claw yourself a point out of a game where you put yourself in a hole. So, I think that’s a positive.”

Edmonton’s warts were invisible in a pair of blow-out wins over Seattle (9-4) and Winnipeg (6-2). They reappeared in this one, as Edmonton possessed the puck for much of the opening frame but stubbornly refused to deliver it to the Sabres’ net.

“I can think of up to 10 times we had the puck in the slot and we didn’t take a shot,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “Anytime you get into that dangerous ice, you should be looking to shoot.

“Very rarely should you be passing off if you can get the puck in the middle of the ice, and I thought we did it way, way too many times.”

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The Oilers’ dirty little habit when they start feeling their game is exactly that: They go all Harlem Globetrotters, circling the zone in that “weave offence,” while the opposition simply protects the middle of the ice.

It comes naturally. Highly skilled players seek the pretty, back-door tap-ins, until things get desperate the way they did Tuesday, trailing 3-0 after 40 minutes.

Then Edmonton reverts to desperate, drive-the-net hockey. Connor McDavid shifts in to shoot mode, players go to the net, and pucks tend to find their way in.

It’s a game they can play, and play efficiently. But for whatever reason, they avoid it the way a kid avoids math homework — until it’s absolutely necessary and can no longer be put off.

“We need to get the job done,” said Podkolzin. “We’re having lots of good habits and we have the best players in the world here, so we have to bring it more.”

If Bouchard “brings it” just a little bit more — either don’t hand a puck to Tage Thompson for a freebie, don’t lose a battle to Alex Tuch to open overtime, or don’t mess up the read and leave Tuch wide open to score the OT winner — Edmonton likely gets two points on Tuesday.

In the end, he played a game-high 28:01. It’s accepted around here, we guess, that every now and again he’ll just hand a goal over to the opposition.

What is Knoblauch’s approach when a player makes a gaffe as big as the one Bouchard made on the Thompson goal?

“Mostly a conversation the next day about what had happened on the play,” the coach said. “To tear a strip off him in between periods or on the bench, I don’t think is productive. He knows he made a mistake. He knows that that’s not the right play.”

And as a team, they know they can play better. Or, at least, closer to 50 minutes, rather than the 20-ish the Oilers rolled out Tuesday.

Onward and forward.

This, folks, is why they play 82.

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