Some nights you give up 47 shots and win 2-1, like the Edmonton Oilers did in Calgary four nights ago. On others you suffocate your opponent, allowing just 17 shots, and you lose 2-1, like they did on New Year’s Eve in Winnipeg.
What are you going to say about an Oilers team that gave up just 10 shots on net through 40 minutes, but lost 2-1 to the Winnipeg Jets on a Neal Pionk one-timer on the power play and a close-in deflection by Kyle Connor?
“We played the style of game we wanted to. We carried the play most of the game,” said Tyson Barrie. “Give them credit, their goalie made some big stops. We had four chances on the power play and don’t get one? That has been a strength of ours all year and it needed to step up tonight, but we just couldn’t get it done.”
On a night that summed up Jack Campbell’s short tenure with his new team, he gave up just two goals — but his team managed just one against Connor Hellebuyck. An Oilers power play that came into the game with a blazing 33.3 per-cent success rate went 0-for-5, hitting posts and crossbars the whole night through.
Campbell really can’t be faulted on either goal against — you’d like a save on the first one, if you’re a hard marker, but the Connor deflection beats every goalie. Yet, on the night he finally kept his goals against below three, Connor McDavid goes pointless and sees his 17-game points streak snapped.
“The guys played really hard and really well. Would have been nice to get the win for them,” Campbell said, with a nod to Hellebuyck at the other end. "He's a pretty darned good goalie, a Vezina Trophy winner, and he played like it tonight."
It is a quiet sign of concern when a goalie is asked to upgrade his equipment to a completely different style mid-season, but so it was that Campbell debuted new, taller and stiffer leg pads and a larger upper body kit on Saturday.
“I've never done that,” he admitted. “I don't think I've changed in two decades. Just trying something new.”
You see, Edmonton’s big signing of the off-season was supposed to be the goalie in front of which a Stanley Cup contender would play. General manager Ken Holland gave Campbell a five-year, $25 million contract on the free agent market, because in the wake of the Mike Smith-Mikko Koskinen era, he had to find a horse that his Oilers could ride to success.
Instead, Campbell has spent the entire first half of his first Oilers season trying to find his game.
To say he has struggled would be generous. Campbell has been poor, and was given 13 days between starts at one point, and another 12-day “rest” soon after that.
As young Stuart Skinner closed his hands around the No. 1 role in Edmonton, Campbell’s numbers have settled at somewhere between “not good enough” and “does he even have it anymore?”
Finally, bedecked in some new gear and enjoying a rare quiet night in the Oilers nets, Campbell looked like the goalie Holland thought he signed. Yet, still, he rang in the New Year with another “L,” his sixth, against eight wins and an overtime loss this season.
“I felt good,” he maintained. “Confident and calm. Back to my game."
His numbers — an .876 saves percentage and a 3.90 goals against average — are dreadful. But hey, at least Campbell has plenty of company right inside his own division.
Including Campbell, there are seven Pacific Division goalies making $5 million or more whose save percentage begins with an ‘8’: Anaheim’s John Gibson, Calgary’s Jacob Markstrom, Seattle’s Philipp Grubauer, Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko, and both Jonathan Quick and Cal Peterson in L.A.
If their goalie feels like he is finally finding form, so too do the Oilers, who have allowed just five goals in three games played since Christmas. This team will always be able to score — even with Leon Draisaitl missing his second straight game. It is the number of pucks that cross Edmonton’s goal line that will define the health of the Oilers’ overall game, not to mention their playoff worthiness.
With the season nudging up towards the halfway mark, there is evidence that they are finding the requisite defensive game to win more consistently than they have thus far.
“When you are missing Leon Draisaitl, that is one of the best players in the world,” Barrie said. “But that being said, I think we played a pretty solid team game tonight. We didn’t give up a ton of chances and we created some looks and had some chances to get one, two, three, four goals. We just didn’t get it done.
“Some nights you play well and don’t get the result you are looking for. It is frustrating, but it is part of the game.”
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