No excuses as Oilers blanked by Dallas Stars

This time the Oilers got soundly beaten by the Stars, not the stripes.

Two nights after they couldn’t solve the St. Louis Blues or the zebras on the ice, losing all three video debates after goals, Edmonton showed up in Dallas Wednesday to try and douse the NHL’s hottest team, and lost fair and square.

Article content

No ‘Yeah, buts’ here in a goaltenders duel, at least for the first 33 minutes between Jake Oettinger and Calvin Pickard, with the Oilers puck management exposed in raw form: case in bullet-point form, a four-on-one jailbreak late in the second period by Dallas with 20-year-old Wyatt Johnston coming out of the penalty box to rip one past Pickard for his 30thgoal.

Article content

Punctuation as Dallas won its club-record eighth straight, 5-0 over the Oilers.

It was only 1-0 on Radek Faksa’s goal 126 seconds in until the Stars, 11-2 in their last 13 and trying to not only be top seed in the West but chasing the President’s trophy, scored four times on Pickard to turn it into a blowout. Tyler Seguin (power play, wide-open shot), Johnston, Jamie Benn and Sherwood Park’s Sam Steel beat the hung-out-to-dry Oiler goalie. They scored four times in 5:48 late in the second, two in 22 seconds.

While first-place Vancouver is stumbling badly — only one point out of 10 over the last three weeks against elite teams, with Elias Pettersson only having points in two of those games — in the Pacific, Winnipeg has dropped six of their last seven in the Central and over in the East, Florida has two wins in their last 10 games, the Oilers were far from playoff go-time in this one.

Maybe they still have the Canucks in their sights, which would likely get them the first wild card Nashville in the first playoff round, but Vegas-Oilers redux seems a far more likely scenario. While Connor McDavid’s rins- and-repeat mantra, “You want to be peaking as you are heading into the playoffs,” this was way more valley than mountain in Dallas.

Article content

Article content

In the hurry-up-and-wait-for-playoffs scenario against the Stars, there would have been room for OK, a close Oilers loss to a team on a heater, coming into the game outscoring the opposition 29-11 during the winning streak, but the Oilers were very sloppy and not very smart.

If this was a measuring-stick game against another of the NHL’s big boys, against a team that is challenging the New York Rangers for most points, the Oilers, who have now lost six of their last eight on the road, took a ruler to their backside.

The Oilers top players — Darnell Nurse, who took a misconduct for arguing his interference penalty in the first period and also had a bad pinch to give up the Johnston goal, Leon Draisaitl, who was trying for his fifth 100-point season but gave the puck up to kickstart Faksa’s first goal, and others — had forgettable nights. And, oof, the power play got nothing done. either. They were 0-for-4.

And the Stars showed how very, very deep they are. They have seven 20-goal scorers and eight players with 50 or more points. “That’s been the story all season long, contributions from different people,” said Dallas coach Peter DeBoer, who got three points from his fourth-liner Faksa and great, continued work from his third line of Johnston, Jamie Benn and rookie Logan Stankoven, a second-round draft pick called up from the AHL who has 13 points in 18 games.

Article content

“Johnston’s line has been playing at a different level since Stankoven got here. Those guys have really elevated,” said DeBoer.

Maybe it’s still player appointment viewing to see when McDavid hits 100 assists and joins hockey’s Rushmore — Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr — as the only ones to do so. But team-wise, it’s still TBD as to what team Oilers will face when playoffs start either April 20 or April 21. And where it’ll start.

“There’s a calm belief in here (heading to playoffs),” said Seguin.

And the Oilers belief? Losing to the desperate Blues in OT, and not getting any challenge calls going their way, was a storyline a few nights ago.

But, getting blown out by the Stars? That’s a headline.

This ‘n that: With Pickard starting in Dallas after he beat them Feb. 17 there, you can expect the No. 1 Skinner to play at home Friday against Colorado in the second meeting this season. Pickard would then start in Calgary Saturday with Skinner on tap to play Vegas at Rogers Place April 10 and Vancouver April 13. Pickard would get the game in between vs. Arizona on April 12 … Oilers went with the same 12 skaters as they did in St. Louis, which meant Derek Ryan was scratched on the fourth line and Troy Stecher, who has played four games since the trade deadline, didn’t take anybody’s place on the back-end … Chris Tanev, the Calgary defenceman whom the Oilers tried to trade for at the deadline, was back for the Stars after a scare in Seattle Saturday when ex Oilers defenceman Adam Larsson caught him with an elbow into the boards and got tossed. Tanev came back to play three shifts after the major and game misconduct on Larsson but then sat on the bench for the rest of the game.

Article content