Hell in a Handbasket

So how do you know that your season is Going to Hell in a Handbasket? When the officials buy a dive of monumental proportions in overtime and you lose on the ensuing power play. What happened last night was a case of Murphy’s Law. What can go wrong, does.

The Edmonton Oilers played possibly their best game in months yet they still managed to lose the game. They outplayed the opposition almost to a man, they out shot them, they out hit them, blocked over 3 times more shots, and even had less giveaways yet they still lost the game. There was 2 places they didn’t outplay the Canucks and in the end, those 2 facets of the game ended up costing them the game.

5 on 5 the Oilers were a far better team than Vancouver. But one of the major achilles heels of this team was blown out of the water. The Sedin twins were almost non-existent for most of the game however they were busy strutting their stuff during the power play. A power play that was 3 for 4 and only spent a total of 3:27 on those man advantage situations. Between them the Sedin’s picked up 1 goal and 5 assists for 6 points.

The first goal was the result of a weak Stortini penalty and the second goal, with only 4:06 to play and the Oilers hanging to a 2-1 lead, was the result of a lazy, weak, stupid, selfish (you can continue to add adjectives here) penalty by Andrew Cogliano. The third was a gift given to them by brutal officiating by referee Kyle Rehman. On a call that was clearly a dive, Oiler’s Denis Grebeshkov was called for hooking and the twins made the abysmal Oiler penalty kill pay. No wonder this team is 29th on the PK after a performance like that.

Unfortunately the penalty kill overshadowed a rather spirited and gritty performance by a team that forgot to show up Monday in Denver. It also wasted the best performance of young goalie Devan Dubnyk’s career. Unfortunately for Dubnyk he is still winless in his young NHL career. In fact he played equal to probably the second best goalie in the world in Roberto Luongo.

The Oilers again failed miserably in the face off circle only winning 42% but to make things worse, they only won 38% of the face offs while short handed. Pretty hard to kill penalties when you can’t win a face off and be able to control the play.

With Carolina winning tonight the Oilers find themselves only 1 point out of last in the league. With Dallas and Chicago up next it doesn’t get any easier. It looks like that maybe the February 1st meeting with the Hurricanes could be the battle for last place. 9 losses in a row and in a free for all fall, we are looking at the possibility that this version of the team could break 3 records in one season, something that hasn’t  happened in a long time. The team has already set a record for the longest winning streak on the road with 5 games. Now they are working on the longest losing streak and lowest number of points in a season. 33 more games to go; at least we have the Olympics to look forward to in the middle of that stretch.

Francis Bacon had a quote that will fit perfectly with the rest of the Oilers season:

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

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