EDMONTON — Well, we got here fast, didn’t we?
“It’s a must-win game for us,” Zack Kassian was saying about the Edmonton Oilers 10th game of the young season, a Hockey Night In Canada tilt against the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight.
“In order to be a good team and get into the playoffs, we have to win hockey games. It’s that simple, and we haven’t done that yet,” said Kassian, of the 3-6 Oilers. “We’ve put ourselves behind the eight-ball. It’s fixable. It’s just got be fixed sooner than later.”
Of course, general manager Ken Holland thought he spent the summer “fixing” things in Edmonton. He nabbed a third-line centre in Kyle Turris, a power-play quarterback in Tyson Barrie, and a complimentary scorer in Dominik Kahun. Well, it turns out his best acquisition was defenceman Slater Koekkoek who, in all due respect, wasn’t supposed to have the biggest impact in that group.
The rest of the imports have been disappointments.
As a new season began in Edmonton, the theme was about giving up less. Connor McDavid spoke early about how they scored enough goals, but had to keep the puck out of their net if they were going to take the next step.
But with the high-flying Maple Leafs in town to finish their two-game set, the Oilers see themselves having given up 3.67 goals per game, fifth-worst in the league. There are myriad reasons why the Oilers have failed so abjectly in keeping their goals against down, but let’s start in goal, where Mikko Koskinen is being worked into the ground due to a series of miscalculations that has left him as Edmonton’s only NHL-calibre netminder.
Holland took a calculated risk in coming back with Koskinen and the 38-year-old Mike Smith. The big Finn has proven to be good when the load is shared — but has never been adept at carrying the starting load — and older goalies tend to get injured.
Well, Smith got hurt before the season started and hasn’t played a game. Meanwhile, Holland opted to protect defenceman William Lagesson and expose No. 3 goalie Anton Forsberg to waivers, another calculation gone bad.
Forsberg was lost, Smith went down, and with back to back games this weekend against Toronto and Ottawa, head coach Dave Tippett is left to decide whether a depleted Koskinen is still better than a 22-year-old local product named Stuart Skinner, who would be making his NHL debut.
You can count on Koskinen starting tonight against the Leafs.
“We don’t have much choice right now,” Tippett said. “Skinner is a young goalie who’s practiced hard, worked hard, but has no experience in the NHL. We’ll continue to try to push Kosky here, game by game, and see how he’s doing. That’s just where we’re at right now.”
What factors does he consider when planning out his goaltending for the Sunday visit by the Ottawa Senators?
“How do we get the best goaltending we can? That’s what we factor in,” said Tippett, who is predictably getting tired of the topic, just as he’s getting weary of explaining losses in his media sessions.
Tippett had a good team when the pandemic hit last March -- the best one in Canada and just three points off the lead in the Pacific Division. Since then, they’ve been bombed out in four games in the Qualifying Round by 12th place Chicago, and gone 3-6 this season for a post-pandemic mark of four wins and nine losses.
Lately it’s the penalty kill that is failing Edmonton, a unit that was second best in the entire NHL last season. On Friday, Tippett was calling out mistakes on his flailing PK, singling out Kailer Yamamoto for not executing “an easy clear” on the game-winning goal by Auston Matthews on Thursday, and calling out Koskinen for not giving the unit enough saves.
And he addressed Caleb Jones on the Matthews goal: “He thinks he’s in a lane, but he’s not in a lane,” Tippett said. “If you get in a lane there’s good possibility you get hit with a puck and that hurts. But it hurts to win.”
A little more pain in Edmonton would help everyone -- starting tonight.
