Matheson: Edmonton Oilers are in denial after losing games to ...

The Edmonton Oilers are in denial.

The players keep saying they’re close to getting back to resembling the team that started painfully slow last fall but roared back to rack up 104 points and get within 60 minutes of the Stanley Cup in Florida in June — but are they really?

They’ve lost all five measuring stick games to Cup contenders — Winnipeg 6-0, Dallas 4-1, Carolina 3-2, New Jersey 3-0, and Vegas 4-2 — no matter how they played and for how long. Their six wins have come against Nashville twice, Pittsburgh, Philly, Calgary, and Detroit with a combined 26-39 record.

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Again, they think they’re close. But, there are cracks. This is like a husband or wife saying they need to go for some counselling to fix things and one partner says, “What do you mean the marriage isn’t working? I think it’s OK.”

Denial.

Where does the unflappable coach Kris Knoblauch think his team is percentage-wise to being the team he wants to see? He won’t put a number on it. All we know is the Oilers have six wins in their 14 games — not nearly good enough.

“A percentage? I don’t know. One game we’re unbelievable. The next… Last night against Vegas, we’re 10 minutes away from winning a 2-1 game,” he said.

“If we win 2-1 against one of the highest-scoring teams and top teams, Vegas, we’re happy with what an effort we put in, but we make costly mistakes, take a penalty, give up a short-handed goal, a couple of gaffes late in the game, and now we’ve totally flipped the switch to where it’s a brutal performance.

“We have to be careful how we assess what’s good and what’s bad.”

What about not beating the good teams, the Cup threats?

”You test yourselves in how you play against the other teams at the top of the league,” he said.

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“We’ve put in some really good efforts but not the results. Close vs. Vegas. In Dallas, we played as well as we could for 40 minutes but didn’t win. Obviously, the opening game against Winnipeg, not good.”

The Oilers are playing to about 40 per cent of their potential, a long way from their confident playoff details with and without the puck. They’re still 6-7-1, so there’s that to chew on. But they’re in the bottom third of the league, in so many categories, close to 20 per cent of the way through the season — goals for, goals allowed, power play, penalty kill, hits, and blocked shots. Although as Knoblauch pointed out, when you’ve got the puck as much as the Oilers do, you’re not hitting much — it’s the weaker teams that lead in hits.

In a positive vein, they’re fourth in NHL faceoff percentage, so they get the puck consistently, but they’re not doing squat with it, five-on-five, to draw any penalties.

Shorthanded, they’re not getting any saves either, when they get infractions.

Stuart Skinner has a .758 save percentage on the penalty kill, the 12th worst. His partner Calvin Pickard’s goals allowed than expected in that situation are dead last.

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The penalty kill is baffling as we all know, giving up 15 goals in 14 games, which means the Oilers are behind 1-0 before the first faceoff of the night. But the power play is the head-scratcher, again Captain Obvious.

“Our five-on-five game has been pretty good for the most part, but we’re losing a lot of games on the special teams battles,” he said.

No argument from Zach Hyman, who has three goals in his last four games.

“Obviously, we could be better on special teams and late in games,” he said.

“But we’re right there. I think we’re close.”

Hmmm!

Certainly, the power play results are mystifying.

Not that they’re drawing any calls. And it’s not like the zebras have it in for them.

Are they doing enough to get the referee’s arm going up?

“No. If you’re hard to play against in the O-zone, you’re holding onto the puck. If you’re tired in the D-zone, you draw penalties by wearing down the other team and forcing them to take penalties. We haven’t done enough of that,” said Hyman.

Knoblauch said he didn’t show the video of the Hanifin GWG in the last minute Wednesday as an instructional tool, where Ivan Barbshev came off a Mattias Ekholm check along the boards, fired a 40-foot pass to Hanifin, who eluded three checkers (Evan Bouchard, Vasily Podkolzin, and Leon Draisaitl) to score on Skinner, with Bouchard, as wonderful as he is offensively, not aware of the danger.

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Emblematic of the Oilers not getting the W a month into the season.

Maybe he’s showing more tape of plays that aren’t resulting in goals. In eight of the 14 games, they’ve had two or fewer goals in a 3-2 league. When you score two or fewer, the chances of winning are less than 10 per cent in the NHL.

“We’re not giving up a crazy amount of (opposing team chances), but it’s the timing. When we do make a mistake, it’s in the back of our net,” said Draisaitl.

Did Knoblauch, ever in his wildest dreams, think offence would be so lame where seven forwards — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (1), Viktor Arvidsson (1), Mattias Janmark (1), Connor Brown (1), Adam Henrique (1), Podkolzin (0), and Derek Ryan (0) — would have five goals total on 144 shots?

Of course not.

“No, I didn’t think that would be a problem. Scoring goals, whether that’s five-on-five or the power play… it’s a bit of everything. I don’t foresee that continuing in an 82-game cycle, but we definitely need to address it and get better because we can’t play a perfect defensive game every night,” said Knoblauch.

Outscoring their mistakes, even minimal ones, has never been a concern.

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But there’s none of that now. The tug on the arm of Shea Theodore by Nugent-Hopkins 200 feet from his net in the third period to give Vegas a power play-tying goal was inexcusable by a veteran, no matter how hard the tug was.

But they didn’t get a save from Skinner either.

And they only got one power play of their own.

“We have to get on the inside more. We have to put teams in situations where they have to reach a bit and take penalties. We need to improve on that,” said Draisaitl, who leads the team with nine goals, eight even strength, and just one on the power play, where he’s had 77 goals the past three seasons but just one through 14 games.

Is not having many power plays in games resulting in malfunctions with the puck?

“Of course,” said Draisaitl.

“You’re not touching the puck nearly as much as you want to. That can sift into your confidence with the puck. But you earn your power plays,” he said.

Nugent-Hopkins was back on left-wing with Connor McDavid and Hyman at practice Thursday with Jeff Skinner, who got a look with 97 against Vegas on the third line with Henrique and Brown…

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Janmark, banged up in the loss to the Golden Knights, didn’t skate and is day to day, leaving the Oilers with just 11 healthy forwards on their bare-bones, salary-cap-squeezed roster. If he can’t play against the Canucks in Vancouver Saturday, their farm team is in nearby Abbotsford on the weekend, so a recall of Noah Philp will be easy…

Troy Stecher, who blocked a shot midway through the third period in the knee area and had to be helped to the dressing room, was back on the ice for practice.

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