This in from Oilers hockey boss Stan Bowman, his take on the struggles of the decidedly mediocre and inconsistent Edmonton Oilers this year, Bowman suggesting a major issue is the play of the defence, not so much top goalie Stuart Skinner.
Said Bowman in discussion with Oilers Now host Bob Stauffer: “I think the defense, they haven’t played a consistent game this year. And I think that’s probably the biggest maybe disappointment so far, because the play of our D is really important in getting the rest of our game going. When we struggle to break the puck out cleanly, we end up disjointed a little bit. We’re not connected as a group. We’ve heard our players talk about that. So I think it starts with the back end and being able to be clean with the puck, sometimes under-handle it, move it and get it going.
Bowman pointed out that not all six d-men have played well at the same time, with top-pairing Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm starting slowly, and Jake Walman going good then seeing his play dip.”
Goaltending gets a lot of attention in Edmonton, but Bowman said starter Stuart Skinner has played well.
“I think Skinner in particular has been pretty solid this year… He’s given us a lot of good performances…. Calvin (Pickard) probably hasn’t started this year the way he did last year when he was really effective and he won some huge games for us. And we certainly want to see that version of him come back. But I think if there is a positive on that side, it’s that Skinner’s trending in the right direction.”
More to come…