This Is A DISASTER For The Oilers…

This Is A DISASTER For The Oilers…

This is a disaster for the Edmonton Oilers following an 8-3 drubbing by the Dallas Stars in their first game back at Rogers Place following a seven-game road trip. It goes from bad to worse and the Oilers are looking very directionless after having some glimmer of hope following the last game of the road trip against the Florida Panthers. We will break down everything from last night in more. Make sure you stay tuned here to Oilers Digest for much more of the Oilers this season. And I mean, Stan Bowman is going to get very, very busy uh real soon, or at least we hope. And hopefully you’re staying busy by hitting that subscribe button down below for any and all Oiler news. Now, before the Oilers left for their road trip, you know, Chris Nblock was saying after the 91 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, I definitely hope this was rock bottom for us. I hope it wakes up a lot of guys and they come back home and they lose 83 to the Dallas Stars. Yes. 83. I’ll just, you know, I’ll leave I’ll leave that up for a couple seconds. I mean, what is this team doing so far this season? and they go, you know, one step forward and they take, you know, um, 1,500 steps back when it’s trying to find out, you know, the identity for this team, trying to figure out, okay, yeah, there’s a little bit of a roster turnover following the Stanley Cup finals, you know, keep things fresh with the team. But it’s nothing nothing from this team suggested, yeah, okay, they’re going to turn the corner and do something uh real real soon here. I mean, I’m not even going to show you the scoring summary. I’m just going to show you what happened in the first period. Dallas going up uh 4 nothing there and that led to the end of Stuart Skinner for that night there and then Dallas adding on two in the second and third there. I mean uh you know there was one bright spot uh the one and only bright spot and that was the guy playing his second career NHL game Connor Gladenberg with his first goal of his NHL career and he was easily the best Oiler all night long and there was no competition whatsoever. It was him you know from start to finish. Uh you know all gas no breaks for Connor Clattenberg. We didn’t really see a whole lot against uh the Florida Panthers with them only playing five and a half minutes, but uh that almost got, you know, bumped up, you know, significantly uh much more uh almost playing 13 minutes last night against the Stars, you know, seven hits, uh one block there. So, again, that was the the only guy on the ice for the Edmonds. I was like, “Okay, yeah, he actually gives a damn tonight.” Couldn’t say that about anybody else. It was so disjointed, disconnected, uh lost, and just, you know, they looked like, you know, a shell of themselves, a remnant of the Edmonton Oilers compared to the Edmonton Oilers. You know, McDavid, Diddle, uh almost said Ninja Hopkins, but he didn’t even play last night. Bard Eckholm just, you know, all the guys that you would expect to step up and go, “Okay, yeah, we’re back at home. Got to get back in the win column.” Nothing. Not a not a peep. Nothing at all there. Except, you know, for number 64. You know, the last guy who wore number 64, Neil Yakpov, I didn’t do anything that Gladenberg did. So, he’s putting some respect back to that number. But again, the goalies, it is the goalenders. I know you’re going to say, “Yeah, it’s the team defense.” But two things can be true. The defense and the goalies both were awful last night. Just a whole lot of, you know, uh, the team being soft around both Pickard and Skinner there. You know, they weren’t, you know, clearing guys out. They were just letting them walk right in. uh letting rebounds jump right back to the Dallas Stars. So yeah, okay, I’m not going to put it all on the goalies there. Some of it was on the defense, but you can just tell when this team is deflated when, you know, again, the first, you know, couple of shots, first four goals in the first period on Steuart Skinner there. Four on eight to be exact. It’s right in front of me right here. A 500 save percentage in the first period. Of course, yeah, you’re going to be deflated. uh absolutely there but you know Conor David and Leon Dittle sort of um you know not not throwing them under the bus there they still have you know faith in their goalie or what appears to be in front of the media. I really feel like goalending is a team thing. It’s tough for goalies to look good when the group in front of them is not playing well. I don’t really care who it is when the team is playing in front of them is uh not playing up to their standards. It’s tough for goalie to look good. I felt bad for both of them tonight. I know Conor Davis saying, “I don’t really care who it is.” Sort of um trying to respond to the rumors that the Oilers play better in front of Pickard uh compared to Skinner there. Okay, there’s a little bit of truth to that, but you know, Conor gave it uh himself saying, you know, it doesn’t matter who you who you put in, you know, prime Patrick Wah prime, Dominic Hassich, it doesn’t matter who you put between the pipes there, that Oiler team in front of them. If they are not performing up to their standards, yeah, it’s going to be a rough night. Leandra settle, you know, adding on to that sentiment. I mean, what are they supposed to do? They’re part of the team, too. And I’m sure they would tell you themselves that they can be better at times, but there’s not much they can do. We’re giving up gradea a look after gradea look. You can’t expect a goalie to stop every single one of them and win the game through one. It doesn’t work like that. We just have to be so much better for them. And again, yeah, that’s absolutely true. They always can be better, but at the same time, when uh you’re used to your goalies, you know, letting you know, the first, you know, one or two shots in uh every game, yeah, that’s going to be deflating. uh absolutely there and when you know the Dallas Stars are all over the Oilers, you can see you know it’s quite the contrast here. You can see the left side of the screen uh you can’t see uh the blue paint whatsoever in front of either Pickard or Skinner there. The Stars getting into the dirty areas. Meanwhile, the Oilers on the right side. You know, whatever happens happens uh with this team. You know, they just, you know, trying to get through the 60 minutes without anything drastically bad happening like an injury. Even though I do believe Trent Frederick uh did miss some time with an injury last night there. I thought he was benched. No, he was just injured. But that’s just a tale of two teams. You know, the Stars smelling blood in the water. Especially, you know, Glenn Goldson, their new head coach, wanting to, you know, prove something to his former team with the Oilers. But at the same time, it’s like, okay, the Oilers and Stars, they’ve seen each other so many times over the past couple years. you know, the rivalry trying to brew up, but it was just looking like, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s when the Mike Madano and Joe Newendike teams rolled into Edmonton and uh won very very easily there. But this this team, you know, I’ll say I’ll say before, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This very lost. I mean, this is just worth a thousand words. Here you can see Breulak being outmanned by two almost three Dallas stars there. The game still very much in reach even though Dallas is up two nothing in the first period. Breakak trying to hustle along the boards there, trying to win that puck battle. And then you can see on the right side, you know, Leon D settles staring at the puck there. No, not wanting to get involved in that whatsoever. And then Tren Fredick saying, “Hey, guess what? You know, the puck is almost in our zone. I’m going to go for a change, guys.” And that led to the three nothing Nathan Bastion goal on the two-on-one. I’m sure you would have loved to say from Stu there, but at the same time, the whole team, again, this just, you know, sums it all up. Very disconnected and disjointed there. And the Sportsnet stats page on Twitter last night was having a field day with hating on the Edmonton Oilers. You know, every single one of these I was like, “Yeah, yeah, no, this this makes sense.” I mean, the Oilers 860 team save percentage is their lowest through 25 games since their inaugural NHL season in 1979 1980 there. And I mean 860 was the norm back in 1980. So to have this in 2025, just absolutely brutal there. And I mean the Oilers, you know, the decade of darkness, those had some, you know, bad goalies, but nothing as bad as a supposed uh in quotations cup contender there. I mean, and again here, just one after another from the Sportsnet stats page. The Oilers are the only team this season to allow seven goals on three separate occasions. Mind you, uh, the Washington game, two of those goals were empty nets, but still seven goals on three separate occasions. Uh, you know, hockey teams shouldn’t be constantly giving up touchdowns, and that’s what Edmonton is doing right now. The Elks have their offseason, but the Oilers have taken over uh where they left off. And the Oilers are the only team this season to trail by five plus goals through two periods on multiple occasions. again that the the other instance was the Avalanche game 6-1 after the second period and for the first time since 2013 the Oilers faced a fourgoal deficit through 20 minutes for the first time since January 22nd 2013 against the San Jose Sharks there. So again, all four of those just reflecting uh you know how bad these Oilers have been this season even though the record is like some like 10 10 wins 10 and five at the bottom of the screen with 25 points. It’s just again inconsistency from this team has plagued them all season long there. You know, they show again some sort of hint of hope. It’s like, okay, yeah, they’re turning the corner and then they lay this egg uh 8-3 against the Dallas Stars there. And if you wanted to see a goalending change anytime soon, uh I don’t think you’ll be seeing that from Frank Sarah Valley. The Oilers wanted to make a goalending change coming out of the road trip, but the player stood up for Calvin Picker. And that just sort of speaks volumes to not only how good of a of a guy Calvin Pickard is. I mean, would have heard in interviews there and uh locker room videos like, “Yeah, he’s a great guy, but at the same time, you don’t win Stanley Cups by being friendly with each other. This isn’t the friendship cup. You got to do whatever you whatever means necessary to win the Stanley Cup there. Fair enough. That’s, you know, cutting bait with, you know, good guys in the locker room. So be it. So the or just kind of asking for, you know, by standing up for a guy who just, uh, other than, you know, one solid game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, just hasn’t been up to snuff there. And the fans are getting sick in tired of it. And with that performance last night, I mean, Stan Bowman’s got kind of has his hands tied here with, you know, the latest on the tandem uh, with Sarah Valley saying they got until Christmas. Bowman is going to afford a few weeks runway. If it’s not better, then we’re going to start to see what Bowman uh has to make something happen there. And well, I think we all saw last night what’s going to happen there. But Leon J settle, you know, not just putting it all on the goalies. We’re clearly not on the same page as a group and then all of a sudden a lot of things get exposed. That’s when you are on the same page don’t get exposed. We’re just not in sync as a group and we have to figure that part out. But we’re nearly 30 games in and still don’t seem to have it down or know what we are. I really don’t know what to say. It was just not good enough. Now, the bad, you know, we don’t have to, you know, go through uh this until Saturday against the Seattle Kraken. But the good news is, you know, there there still is, you know, time. I know I’m trying to, you know, provide uh some hope here, even though it’s dwindling, but there is some time for the Oilers to get back on track and say, “Hey, it’s time to get serious.” even though they said that time and time uh before. I mean, fool me once, right? But the Oilers in Kraken at 2:00 Mountain, it’s an afternoon game on Saturday. You know, the Thanksgiving um schedules, you know, in the in the United States that kind of throwing everything off. I mean, last night was the only game in the NHL. And what a game that was. I mean, we were on display uh for all other all the other 30 teams in the NHL to sort of realize, hey, Edmonson’s a bit of a dumpster fire this year, aren’t they? But, you know, it’s always nice to, you know, get embarrassed in front of every other team. But the Oilers in Kraken the Kraken uh you know not doing too shabby themselves. So again it’ll be a good test for the Oilers divisional wise uh against Seattle in a Barton which they’ve had you know quite a lot of success in for uh you know Seattle in the climate pledge arena. But that is it for today’s video folks. Let me know down in the comments what you all had to say about last night’s game. It’s going to be uh yeah, a lot of thoughts down there and so give me all you give me all give me everything you have to say about these Oilers at this stage of the season. Take care everybody. Have a great rest of your day. I’m Matt.

The Oilers were star-struck last night as Edmonton trailed 4-0 after the 1st period and things went from bad to worse in their home affair against the Dallas Stars, and Matt Pearce is back to figure out where it’s all going wrong.

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