This is what we hear from Edmonton Oilers a team that lost by eight on Saturday night at home. The team that left after its goalie missed the ball when the score was 2-0 curled up and watched as the Avs scored seven more goals without receiving the slightest rude response.
Like this one from Trent Frederickwhose impact since joining this team at last season's trade deadline has been less than microscopic.
“I’m trying to get out of this,” suggested Frederick, who was as quiet as a church mouse as the Avs made their way to Rogers Place.
He has one point and six PIM this season. He doesn't have the arms of a top-six hitter or the stance of a bottom-six hitter.
“The fight comes. You can only ask so many guys when you have one goal in 15 games, no one will fight you,” Frederic defended. “You want to do it and give your team a spark, but who wants to fight a guy who has one goal in 15 games? I wouldn't.”
Yes, because fighters usually score 25 points.
Or a winger Andrew Mangiapanewhose game should have come complete with sandpaper.
Wasn't he supposed to hurt his opponents? Wasn't he a guy who was difficult to play against?
“Yes, of course,” he replied when asked if he needed to bring more of it. “Just going out there is hard work and hard work. And if it happens, it happens.”
A fighter will not fight until he has scored enough goals. The pest stands and waits for his game to fall from the sky.
“I don't know if we think it's going to be easy for us,” said defenseman Jake Wollman, who has had a serious pinch issue this season. “So it's just getting started, right? Everybody's just buying in and just bringing that intensity, whatever that is for you. Every player is different.”
It was this path that took the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. It starts out slow, gets worse, and somewhere they hit rock bottom – usually around this time of year.
“I definitely hope this is rock bottom for us,” head coach Chris Knoblauch said. “Hopefully this will wake up a lot of guys and realize that we still have a lot of growing to do to be a good hockey team.”
Meanwhile, Stuart SkinnerThe player's save percentage dropped back to .889, and on Saturday we saw the team crumble when he allowed Cale Makar's lucky wrist shot to go past him with 13:39 to play. When Makar's much less accurate shot – without movement, with a perfect line of sight, directly under the blocker – eluded him 66 seconds later, Skinner's team gave up right in front of him.
Either they will give up on him or they will give up on themselves, but either way, what we saw on Saturday tells us that they are done with this goalkeeper as their undisputed number one.
We asked Knoblauch if the Oilers' skaters had lost faith in their goalie, and the long pause before answering said more than any of his subsequent word salads.
“I don't believe it,” he said, before launching into a defensive series of excuses for Skinner's play that we've been hearing for more than a year.
The number of opposition goals scored by unattended players in front of the goalkeeper is absurd, but two things may be true. What we saw on Saturday tells us that GM Stan Bowman better focus his entire court on the goalie market because his players have seen enough of Stuart Skinner as “the guy.”
“We’re not really moving in the right direction, and they kicked our ass tonight,” Wolman said. “As far as the guy is concerned, we owe it to everyone here to figure out what our role is — what everyone’s role is on the team — and do it.”
Goalies must make saves, defensemen must defend, scorers must score, and deep forwards must stop playing on the perimeter and move pucks to the net. It starts there.
What about the coaches? They also fall.
When will we finally realize that the Oilers are a tougher opponent with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl centering their lines?
When will the Oilers coach stop falling into the trap of having a bench full of supporting guys who don't even break a sweat while Nos. 97 and 29 play 24 minutes as the answer to every problem the Oilers face? Why on earth are they killing penalties by taking more minutes away from the foot soldiers who play 10 minutes a game?
When is it fair to look at a fourth line built with three veteran players who have played 49 NHL games – David Tomasek, Matt Savoie and Ike Howard – and wonder how a line lacking size, grit and experience is supposed to propel a Stanley Cup run from four holes?
As an Edmonton radio host called it, “It's the kind of performance where you get a clear picture of where you're not.”
Either that or it spoke volumes about who the Oilers have become.
