Oilers must decide how to best utilize newcomers after uninspired loss

COLUMBUS — Kris Knoblauch thought long and hard about how he would employ his latest two additions. Would Adam Henrique debut at centre or on the wing? How to best utilize Sam Carrick?

Back home, folks fussed and fought over the lines. Is Henrique better at centre than wing? Do you break up Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, after five straight wins?

Then they dropped the puck in Columbus, and the Edmonton Oilers played as bad a 20 minutes as we’ve seen in weeks, falling behind 3-0.

And the grand plan? It went the way of that obnoxious cannon they employ here at Nationwide Arena.

Boom!

“No, didn't work out very well,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch, who threw his top 9 in the blender during the first intermission of what would eventually be a 4-2 loss to the last place Blue Jackets — a team that began the night 26 points behind the Oilers in the NHL standings.

“We just have to figure something out with what we want (with the lines). And it's tough to evaluate how the lines worked (tonight), because I don't think that's the story. No matter what the lines were at the beginning … we didn't have the same level of intensity as we did the previous game.”

They’re funny, these trade deadline-week games.

There were two new players in the lineup Thursday — Henrique and Carrick — forcing a coach whose team had won five straight with a certain set of lines to re-jig his lineup.

The new guys are nervous and out of sorts. They seldom play well at all in these debuts.

And there are always a couple of veterans like Cody Ceci and Warren Foegele — two guys who have been hearing for two weeks about how their salaries may be on the move to make room for incoming 'improvements' — whose heads aren’t always in these games either.

“It's just part of the job though, right? I think anyone would want to be in our position to play the game that we love,” Foegele said. “It comes with the pros and cons of this week, I guess.”

Foegele beat himself up over a bad turnover on the 3-0 goal, which came at as bad a time as you could imagine.

Trailing 2-0, Carrick had just taken on the tough Mathieu Olivier in a spirited scrap, wasting no time in showing his teammates what he brings to the table. It was Carrick’s eighth fight of the season, and a welcome sign that GM Ken Holland has found some toughness for a fourth line that has been without an identity all season long.

Carrick took on Olivier right off the centre ice faceoff that followed Columbus’ 2-0 goal. After the dust had settled and the puck dropped again, Foegele made an ill-advised pass for an unassisted goal by Dmitri Voronkov just 27 seconds later.

“Sammy comes in here, new guy, character guy, has a massive fight to get us some energy. And unfortunately, I went out there and turned over the puck,” Foegele said. “We're down 2-0 and he's just trying to bring some energy. That’s a hell of a fight by him, and it shows the kind of the character that he has. For myself, I have to just live to fight another day and chip it out.

“I take full responsibility.”

This was a battle between the NHL’s top comeback team versus the club that’s blown more leads than anyone else. We’ll let you figure out who’s who.

Zach Hyman’s 43^rd goal early in the second period gave Edmonton a sniff, and Corey Perry’s deft redirection of an Evander Kane shot in the third period put the Oilers in a position to at least pull Calvin Pickard and take a run at their second six-on-five goal in as many games.

Alas, there’s only so much magic to go around, and a team that’s so masterful at chasing games down watched Jack Roslovic slide a puck into their empty net to put this game away.

McDavid, who was reunited with Draisaitl and Hyman in the line rearrange, notched an assist for his 100^th point of the season. He becomes the third player to record seven-plus seasons with 100-plus points before his 28th birthday, joining Wayne Gretzky (10) and Mario Lemieux (eight).

He also stretched his points streak to 13 games (2G, 27A). This is his third point streak of 12 games or more this season.

The newcomers, as is almost always the case, were quiet. Henrique had one shot on goal and a high-sticking minor, starting the game as the left-winger to Draisaitl, then toggling to centre a line between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Foegele.

“Sammy does a great job going out there — that's a big fight. It's a tough job to do,” Henrique said. “We’ve just got to respond thereafter. Have a good shift after it with some energy.

“I thought we responded pretty well in the second (period), but we just came up short there. Had some opportunities, but not maybe not enough established offensively.”