Oilers Lose to Blues

They only had 2 shots in the 3rd and12 shots on net for the entire game as the Edmonton Oilers left behind a stink akin to that of Pepe le Pew.  

4-0 Blues.

With an incredibly depleted line-up, where all of the top point producers are out with injuries, the Edmonton Oilers (er...Oklahoma Barons) could only hope and/or pray that one out of the 12 shots would bleed through, Jaroslav Halak. With goal scoring approaching an all time low for the Oilers, it seems apparent that the remaining 9 games will see the same results to what was witnessed tonight in St. Louis. 

At times, it appeared as though that defensive hockey was the strategy in order to create offense. Renney, must've looked down his roster and finally realized that his team wasn't going to run up the scoreboard.  Instead, a trap-like system was implemented, which later failed.

Perhaps, the hope was to keep the game at zero and then have Linus Omark win it in the shoot-out?

"What we wanted to do, is keep the shot total down and limit their opportunities to feel good about their game,” said Oilers head coach Tom Renney. “We did that until the start of the third period. They knew that we were here to play hockey.

“But the wheels didn’t just wobble, they fell off. We needed a couple of kills that we didn’t get and we needed to attack more and put more pucks on goal, play more hockey in their end. We had a hard time doing that eventually.”

After coming away unscathed in the first frame, the Oilers looked poised and ready to battle the physical Blues.  In fact, 3 bouts in the first, set the tone for the rest of the game.  

“We had a great first period, where everybody stepped up for each other,” said Paajarvi. “We were having a great second period, too, but then it was not a great shift by our line and I turned the puck over and Oshie was able to score the first goal.”

And that was a thing of beauty.  Oshie's short-side-shelf-tuck began the imminent onslaught to hand the Oilers their 8th straight loss. D'Agostini, Stewart and Cracknell also contributed to the win.

"Lack of shots and too many penalties," should headline the obituary of this match-up.

"We were in the game for the first two periods,” said Andrew Cogliano. “There weren’t a lot of shots either way, then we took too many penalties in the third. We gave them the momentum.

Renney eluded to the other glaring issue of the team.

“At the end of the day, our power play is really the problem,” said Oilers head coach Tom Renney. “We have to at least generate chances off that. If you can do that, then it does move into other parts of your game.

“We weren’t able to generate much.”

With the Flames on the horizon, the Oilers will have to just dig a little deeper or else ask Mr. Katz to concoct a super healing pill, which will benefit the walking wounded.

"We’re working hard, we just not working smart. With the guys we have out (of the lineup), obviously the offence isn’t going to come very easily but we still have to score. The guys who have come up (from the American Hockey League), the guys who are here have scored this year. There’s no excuse.” admitted Cogliano.