Oilers lose game of inches in feisty Battle of Alberta

Usually, when you hit three or four bars in one night, you’ve had a pretty good time.

But in a 3-2 loss at Calgary, the Edmonton Oilers only got the hangover, finding themselves on the wrong side of the inch on three or four shots that rang iron-out, instead of iron-in.

“It was one of those nights where we probably had enough chances to get more than two goals,” agreed head coach Kris Knoblauch. “But you know, looking back at the previous three or four weeks, we were scoring four or five goals many nights. Maybe we didn’t deserve four or five those nights.”

“It’s a tight game, right?” said winger Andrew Mangiapane. “They usually are, especially the Battle of Alberta. We had a lot of cross bars and posts and all that. A couple more inches the other way, maybe it goes in for us.”

This was exactly that.

A leveling of the odds between a red-hot Oilers team that was 8-2-1 in its previous 11 games and coming off a 5-1 thumping of the Flames up in Edmonton, against a Calgary team that has a game like this one in them — and is an irascible opponent when they roll it out.

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And the Flames had a couple of posts as well. They were full-credit for the win, an important bounce-back game after the Oilers had toyed with the Flames up in Edmonton days earlier.

Calgary dragged a sleepy Oilers team into what turned into a fantastic game. The Oilers had to pick up their pace or get steamrolled at the Saddledome.

“Our start was a little slow and sluggish,” admitted Mangiapane. “It’s a couple days off (over the Christmas) break and all that. They’re going through the same thing, (but) I would have liked our intensity to be maybe a little bit more engaged.”

The good news is, this is Calgary’s identity. If they play with an intensity level like this every night, they could be a playoff team.

The bad news? Nobody plays like this for 82 regular-season games. It’s impossible. And anything less will land the Flames in the mushy middle, a neighbourhood that franchise has resided in since, oh, about 1990.

Edmonton, meanwhile, has a few more levels to its game. They played OK and lost 3-2.

“Lots to improve on, but some things to like,” said defenceman Evan Bouchard, who scored on a power-play rocket past the stellar Dustin Wolf, while clanging another off the post. “They were just playing faster than we were. Maybe our defencemen, we held on to (the puck) a little bit long sometimes.”

One bright light has been goaltender Connor Ingram, who has started three consecutive games, allowing just seven goals. He has been excellent, and the prospect of him and Tristan Jarry sharing the nets down the stretch portents an Oilers goaltending environment that would define the improvement they’ve been seeking here for some time.

If Ingram can find the form he showed back in his days as an Arizona Coyote, that minor transaction could become Stan Bowman’s finest hour as the Oilers general manager.

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What we learned

Games like this one — the ones that take a lot of courage to become part of — they teach you something about your players.

We find out that Matt Savoie doesn’t go away, despite being a small player who becomes the nail more often than the hammer. Or that Spencer Stastney has the wherewithal to play — and play well — in a game like this one, which more closely resembled the Battles of old than most.

Andrew Mangiapane? Meh, we’d have liked to have seen him take a bigger bite.

Trent Frederic? Well, it’s likely not fair to judge Frederic on 7:15 of ice time, but that’s where he is these days. If he wanted to be a part of a more rough-and-tumble Battle of Alberta, he should have made an impression in Period 1 against a Flames team that was clearly going to play with an physical edge.

Frederic continues to wait for the game to come to him. And of course, he gets further from the game in the process.

We’d have liked to see Max Jones get more than just 7:36 of ice time as well. But it’s pretty clear that Knoblauch feels that stoking the kind of game that Calgary wants to play is not the smart coaching play. He wants a skilled game out of his team, while Calgary wants a game with some bump and grind.

On this night, we’d say the Flames got their way.