EDMONTON — Elephant in Edmonton Oilers'room is a man of few words. And his teammates say even less, delicately tossing his name around as they try to explain why yet another play went wrong.
“The turnovers changed the game a little bit. We need to fix that.” Leon Draisaitl minutes ago, he hemmed and hawed when asked to explain the Oilers' collapse that turned a 3-1 Oilers lead in the third period into a 4-3 overtime loss. “The mistakes we made ourselves, that's all. There's nothing magical about what other teams do. We're just beating ourselves up right now. That's what we need to fix.”
Were the New York Rangers forced to work hard enough to score most of their goals on the night?
“Like I said three times, turnovers changed the game,” an impatient Draisaitl said. – So no.
We've been in enough locker rooms and talked to enough NHL players to know that a teammate never calls out a teammate. Not in a functional, well-organized locker room like the one the Oilers built.
Therefore, they speak without naming names, criticizing their “collective” game, without delving into personalities.
Across the way, Darnell Nurse, whose head coach Chris Knoblauch sat on the bench for the first five minutes of the second period Tuesday after Nurse had a brutal first period against Utah, also struggled to explain the loss.
It's like a weird game of hockey charades where everyone is talking about something, but no one is allowed to say the main word (or words).
“To get your game back, you just have to go back to simplicity,” Nurse said, offering an oblique look at why Slon continues to give up pucks — costing his team goals and plays — this season. “I think sometimes when you force a game you think the next game will go away and that was the case to some extent.
“When we lose momentum and you feel the other team coming, you need to simplify the game and get back to working hard.”
The Elephant opened the night with an errant D-to-D pass along the offensive blue line that the Rangers' Johnny Brodzinski pounced on like a defender on a cooldown and carried the puck into the end zone. Stuart Skinner to the score 1-0.
But that moment was forgotten midway through the third period, with the Oilers holding a 3-2 lead as “The Elephant” collected the puck high in his own zone and attempted a routine dump-out.
The puck was knocked down by Connor Sheary, who passed it to Taylor Raddysh, who fired it past Skinner to tie the game.
“Obviously it’s happening a little more often,” Slon said. “That second interception that led to the goal, I didn't actually try to play. It came off the stick and in the back of our net. That definitely needs to be fixed. I'm going to have to play harder.”
Elephant is, of course, the Oilers' highest-paid defenseman. Evan Bouchard. Moments later, he was slow to switch coverage to New York's overtime winner, a hat trick of scrappy defensive plays that left Bouchard at minus-3 on the night and a team-worst minus-9 through 12 games this season.
“As far as Evan is concerned, sometimes your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness,” Knoblauch began. “You have a lot of talent for making passes and you have confidence that you can do it. But when it doesn't work, it costs you chances against.”
Will he ever consider sitting Bouchard down like he sat Nurse in the previous game?
“We have to hold all of our players accountable,” Knoblauch said. “There is a fine line between mistakes, which happen from time to time because no player can play perfectly. There will always be a mistake.
“But if there is an accumulation of mistakes that are regularly costing us, then yes, we need to hold everyone accountable.”
We are going to change the situation and hold Knoblauch accountable. We do not see Bouchard being held accountable in any way that is visible or recorded on the game report.
On the worst night a pro could have had, a minus-3 rout on Long Island two weeks ago, Bouchard still led all Oilers defensemen with 24:19 of ice time. Two days later, he led the entire team with 25:31 of ice time.
On Thursday against the Rangers, Bouchard made his first egregious error at 5:44. He made the next one with eight minutes to play in the third.
But here he was on the ice in overtime with Connor McDavid and Draisaitl, made a miscalculation and held the door open so JT Miller could slot through the slot and win the game untouched.
The final game report showed 22:34 playing time, more than any Oilers defenseman.
Responsibility? Sorry Chris, that's not a responsibility.
We're 12 games into the season and we're not sure Bouchard has had six good periods yet.
They need him, we understand that. And he was always there when the games became important in April and May.
But for now, “The Elephant” is forcing his teammates to dance around the obvious: they're getting killed by their highest-paid defenseman, and he could stop at any moment.
Then maybe they could start saying his name again.
