You think the Oilers have had some bad starts?
The last-place St. Louis Blues were in a full-on nose-dive heading into Monday’s game with Edmonton — 3-7-2 on the season and 0-5-2 in their previous seven games.
It’s been so rough that if you spotted them the first three moves in a game of tic-tac-toe, they’d still find a way to lose.
But slumps don’t last forever, not unless you’re talking about the Vancouver Canucks and Stanley Cups. You knew that at some point, the Blues were going to pull out of it and beat somebody.
And, admit it, the way the on-again, off-again Oilers have been stumbling through the season, you kind of worried that it was going to be them.
Well, it was.
The eternally-frustrating Oilers had the sad sack Blues down 2-0 late in the second period, only to find themselves on the wrong end of a 3-2 defeat at an Enterprise Center in St. Louis that was as shocked as you are.
“It’s tough,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Especially when we’re up 2-0 and then end up losing and not getting any points.
“It’s unfortunate where it fell, but most of the game we played well enough to get two points.”
They were looking pretty good in building a 2-0 lead, a first-period power play goal from Jack Roslovic and a second-period marker from Andrew Mangiapane. Here come the Oilers!
But, as has so often been the case in the work in progress that is Edmonton’s season, they lost focus and took a couple of heavy punches. Two St. Louis goals in the last four minutes of the second period turned what should have been a sure win against an underwhelming opponent into a 20-minute sprint.
And, when Evan Bouchard let Pius Suter get behind him to score the 3-2 goal with 1:23 left in regulation, that was it. The guys who were sitting tied for dead last in the league had the last laugh.
The big mistakes, a disproportionate amount of them coming from Bouchard, is still a recurring theme. When a team is trying ot find its footing, this is the kind of stuff that kills any momentum and drills holes in a team’s confidence and morale.
“It’s unfortunate to give them that goal like that,” said Knoblauch.
“We have to bear down in those situations and we’re not doing that right now,” added defenceman Mattias Ekholm.
Knoblauch is right, though. Edmonton played well enough to win for most of the game, but turning the knife when they have a lead hasn’t exactly been their strong suit, either.
They are the only team in the league to have already blown three multi-goal leads this season. They were up 3-0 on the Calgary Flames midway through the second period of their home opener and they lost 4-3 in a shootout. They were up 3-1 on the New York Rangers in the third period last week and lost in overtime. Now this.
“We had our looks, but we can do a better job of maybe imposing our will a little bit more in the third and earning the win more than we did tonight,” said Ekholm. “We had some glimpses, but I think we can do more.”
The Oilers fell to 6-5-3 and are still trying to find even the slightest measure of consistency after going W-L-O-W-O-W-L in their last seven games. Fourteen games into the season, and they’ve only won back-to-back games twice.
“There are things that we like and things that we can work on,” said Ekholm. “It’s early in the year. I don’t think any team is perfect at this time of year, but we can obviously do a better job.”
On the bright side
It didn’t generate a lot of buzz when Edmonton signed Jack Roslovich two games into the season. Yes, he scored 22 goals last year, but it was nine the year before and 11 the year before that. And he couldn’t find a buyer out of 32 teams all summer.
Now that he’s settled in after not having a training camp, Roslovic is turning into an impact player. He has three goals and two assists in the last five games and is promoted to the first unit power play.
“Honestly, he’s been great since he’s been here,” said McDavid. “It’s pretty impressive, really. He doesn’t have a camp; he jumps right in and has looked really dangerous every game. He’s been great.”
Connor McDavid #97 of the Edmonton Oilers controls the puck against the St. Louis Blues during the second period at Enterprise Center on Nov. 3, 2025, in St Louis, Missouri.
More milestones
It’s not going to mean much of anything on a night when the Oilers blew a 2-0 lead, but with two assists Monday, McDavid has five points in his last two games and reached 1,101 for his career.
At 726 games, he is the fourth-fastest player to reach 1,100 points behind Wayne Gretzky (464), Mario Lemieux (550) and Mike Bossy (725).
McDavid also passed Glenn Anderson into 69th place on the NHL’s all-time scoring list. He is two behind Frank Mahovlich and 20 behind Darryl Sittler.
E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com
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