The Edmonton Oilers were the second No. 12-seeded team to be eliminated from the 2020 NHL playoff conversation on Friday. Earlier in the day, it was the Montreal Canadiens who upset the Pittsburgh Penguins. Just a couple of hours later, the heavily- favored Oilers, led by a productive Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan-Nugent Hopkins, were sent home far earlier than expected.
The only problem, unlike 22 other NHL clubs, the Oilers are already home. They’ll now have to watch the rest of the NHL playoffs move on without them and cross their collective fingers that their 12.5% chance to land Alexis Lafreniere in Monday’s Draft Lottery is enough.
Where the Oilers Came Up Empty
It wasn’t the big dogs for the Oilers that let the team down. McDavid had two assists again on this night, giving him nine points in the four games. Nugent-Hopkins scored again to give him eights points in the series. Draisaitl was left off the score sheet but he did his part over the course of four games and had a number of chances to pot one on Friday.
It was the puck battles and the defense that let them team down.
Chicago had more urgency in their game and it was clear from Game 1 that Edmonton was going to have to work harder and with more frequency than the Blackhawks. They simply didn’t.
As Jason Gregor of TSN 1260 points out,
“… illustrates lack of playoff emotion from Oilers entire series. Oilers waited too long to show up in series. Final 20 minutes only time they played with urgency shift after shift.”
Defense Was Overmatched
The lack of experience on Edmonton’s blue line was evident. Too many Blackhawks were left wide open with good looks and that trend continued in Friday’s contest. Repeatedly, dangerous threats like Jonathan Toews and Dominik Kubalik were wide open in front of the Oilers net. It was testing fate thinking skilled players of that level wouldn’t finish.
There is an argument that blue line that was there most of the season wasn’t the group fans saw over these four games. Adam Larsson was injured and Mike Green opted out of the playoffs. Still, it’s hard to suggest that argument is valid when you consider the same lineup who helped the Oilers become the five seed in the regular season — Darnell Nurse, Ethan Bear, Oscar Klefbom, Kris Russell, and Matt Benning — didn’t do their part to keep the Blackhawks off the board. And, considering Green played only a couple of games for the Oilers, his absence should have made no difference.
Darnell Nurse admitted after Friday’s loss, “The most intensity we had was in our exhibition game against Calgary.”
Far too often, Oilers players found themselves in the penalty box. In an NHL that includes as much parity as it does, no matter what seed you’re playing, you’re asking for trouble when you give the opposition great opportunities.
Lack of Compete?
‘Tonight they didn’t out battle us, but we made some critical mistakes that ended up in the back of our net,” head coach Dave Tippett said. he added, “It is frustrating because we expected more. I think we might have overachieved a bit in regular season, and underachieved in this series.”
Some will question Tippett’s decision to wait until the final minutes of the third period in the final game to reunite the hottest line in hockey — Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins and Kailer Yamamoto — and there’s some merit to that. It was clear in the dying moments of the game, the chemistry between the three players was there.
When asked about why he didn’t reunite that line earlier, Tippett responded, “You can’t expect to win by being a one line team. If we want to be good long-term we will need depth throughout the lineup.”
Like the Oilers players, Tippett will have time now to ask himself, ‘What if?’
Oilers Will Have Time To Think
Connor McDavid might have put it best when he said, “it’s been a weird year.. I thought we had a good training camp but you lose 3 of 4 and you don’t get in that’s the way it goes.” Nugent-Hopkins added, “It’s tough to swallow right now. We have a long time to think about [this].”
That’s going to be a recurring theme throughout these playoffs as lower-seeded teams take out the higher-seeded ones.
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