‘We need to find a way’: Oilers playing like a one-man team

EDMONTON — They are a one-man team these days, these Edmonton Oilers. A roster full of single digits, earning their cheques as the guys who fist bump McDavid and the rest of the power play as they fly the bench after a goal.

“We need to find a way,” admitted third-line centre Adam Henrique, after another pointless night in a 5-2 Oilers loss to Philadelphia.

Henrique is colder than a Northern Alberta Christmas these days, his stats line as barren as a wind-blown, Westlock wheat field, with exactly zero goals in his last 34 games. For a guy who plays 14 minutes per night — largely against third-pairing defencemen — that is inexcusable.

“For me, it’s been a long time finding the back of the net,” admitted Henrique, who looks around the bottom six and sees no-shows in Trent Frederic and healthy scratch Andrew Mangiapane, a one-goal winger in Mattias Janmark, a two-points-in-20-games Curtis Lazar, and a few others who skate kilometres but produce by the centimetre.

“We have to be able to find a way to be difference makers,” Henrique said. “There’s other areas in our roles where we have to be good and be smart and contribute, and it’s not always on the score sheet. But at the end of the day, we have to find a way to get on there at times. That can be the difference on some nights. We certainly talk about it a lot and try to find ways to improve offensively. Again, that is part of our role.”

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This was another game where McDavid scored at even strength and set up a power-play goal. He’s been in on 52 per cent of the Oilers’ goals this season, which is great for the highlight shows, but does tend to buttress the opinion that the Oilers can be a one-man team at times.

“He always brings it,” said defenceman Spencer Stastney. “We want to support him as much as we can. There’s always a time and place for us to try to step up. I mean, it’s a team game. He’s going to do his thing, but we’ve got to help him out there, too.”

The formula here in Edmonton is simple:

McDavid’s line scores a goal every night, the power play scores a goal every night, and on many nights, Leon Draisaitl’s line pots one. Now you’re at three goals, and the entire bottom six and defence corps haven’t even chipped one in yet.

On Saturday against the Flyers, the Oilers fell behind 3-0 before the formula began to flesh out. McDavid scored on a breakaway, then set up Evan Bouchard for a power-play bomb.

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But lately, the formula has been flawed because Draisaitl’s game has temporarily gone on hiatus. Draisaitl has scored in one of his last 13 games — a hat trick — and he has just one even-strength goal since Dec. 1.

You won’t catch us calling out an annual 50-goal, 100-point man on his production, but facts are facts. When Draisaitl runs dry, it’s up to the rest of the forwards to pick up the slack, and on this team, it simply isn’t happening.

Mangiapane was given a seat in the press box again, while Frederic didn’t have a shot on goal in nearly nine invisible minutes. His contract — eight years at $3.85 million per — has reached Jack Campbell territory as possibly the worst contract in club history.

Head coach Kris Knoblauch, desperate for anything from his bottom six, flanked rookie Matt Savoie with two Bakersfield call-ups — rookies Quinn Hutson and Ike Howard — and the experiment failed miserably. That line went without a shot on goal, meaning the Oilers’ entire bottom six combined for one, single shot on goal Saturday, a metaphor for the “depth scoring” the Oilers have had through half a season thus far.

Asked if he could somehow coach some offence out of this moribund bottom six, Knoblauch offered up a word salad that would feed a family of four.

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“Yeah, absolutely, there’s things you can do,” he began. “Whether it’s the strategy of getting pucks to the point, shooting pucks, looking for sticks and rebounds. Every line can have a bit of a strategy.

“But a lot of that is players feeling good about their game,” he finally admitted. “That’s where the offence usually comes. Right now, we’ve gone a long stretch with a lot of guys (not) contributing. That’s where we’re at. A little short of production in the depth role.”

They’re a one-man team. Two men, as we assume that Draisaitl’s game will come around.

But that is GM Stan Bowman’s primary chore, from here on in.

He’s got to move Mangiapane in a market that is well aware of the decline in the player’s game. He and Knoblauch must find a way for Frederic — he of three lousy points in 41 games — to be something less than a boat anchor night in and night out, and in the process, fulfill this one, obvious task:

GET McDAVID SOME HELP.

Even the Great No. 97 can not win a Stanley Cup alone.

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