The Edmonton Oilers had the opportunity to win last night’s game in the first fifteen minutes. That is exactly what they should have done, but there was not the option of running after the Vegas Golden Knights for 60 minutes.
Edmonton is at the tail end of two back-to-back road games, and with the club being riddled with injuries, they managed to stay competitive against the super-hot Knights for about as long as anyone could expect before the Knights took over. The end result was a 3-0 loss on a night the Knights had superior goaltending and a better team as well.
In post-game interviews, Leon Draisaitl stated, “We needed a powerplay goal. We had enough chances to score, especially the first two powerplays. Just couldn’t get one over the line.”
Draisaitl himself lost messed on multiple chances of earning his 100th point this season but simply could not get the job done and that was not lost on the star forward, who adding to his comments stated, “Other than the second period I thought we played a solid game. We created chances. But nights like that, they happen. We’ve probably won a lot of games this year where we created a lot less than tonight.”
In the first minutes, he sent multiple shots but failed to put into the net, and in the third period, he hit the post with one shot. Connor McDavid also missed out on several opportunities in the opening minutes of the first that he usually connects with and it was the skill of Marc-Andre Fleury that put the brakes on the Oilers having any hope of being relevant in the game last night.
It was after the first 15 in the first that things went south for Edmonton. This came about after Max Pacioretty fired off a shot that should never made it in past Mikko Koskinen, who played solid in net thereafter had little help from the Oilers who after recent events seemed pretty beaten up.
On the plus side for Edmonton, they did manage to gain three points during this road trip, one that has seen them play nine of their last 12 on the road including stops in Florida, California, Nashville and Chicago. The bad news, however, is they lost four out of the last five.