Penner keeps Plugging While Oilers Players Recovering

With just three wins in their past ten games, the Edmonton Oilers continue to struggle through the first half of the 2009-10 NHL season. Once again, the team has been forced to grapple with a ridiculous

Inconsistent Oilers Looking for a Break

The Edmonton Oilers have settled into a pretty serious slump lately, losing four of five including a pathetic three by shutout. To make things worse, it was announced on Wednesday that centre Shawn Horcoff will be out 7-10 days after suffering a shoulder injury in Monday’s loss to the New York Islanders.

 Once again, a familiar story for Edmonton is playing out, as the team is once beset by a series of injuries. Over the course of recent games the Oilers have found themselves without Mike Comrie, Gilbert Brule, Ales Hemsky, Sheldon Souray, Steve Staios, Ryan Stone, Marc Pouliot and Fernando Pisani for varying amounts of time. Perhaps the most detrimental has been the concussion suffered by Souray, who has now been moved to the long-term injured reserve. 

The injuries are certainly making things worse for an Edmonton offence that has struggled to consistently produce goals, let alone shots on net. On average so far this season, the team has been out-shot 33.8 to 25.1. If it wasn’t for the solid play of goaltenders Nikolai Khabibulin (90.7 save percentage) and Jeff Deslauriers (95.7 save percentage), things would be a lot worse.  

From a fan’s point of view, there hasn’t been a lot in Edmonton’s past few games in the way of entertainment. They were shutout against Vancouver, Boston and Colorado, the later of which was excruciating to watch. How is it possible that Colorado has been unstoppable so far this year? Two words: Craig Anderson; but that’s an entirely different story to discuss. 

Meanwhile, the game against Detroit was the anomaly of the week, in which the Oilers’ play was somewhat inspired. They almost blew what had been a 5-1 lead halfway through the game, but Khabibulin bailed them out. He stoned all three shooters in the shootout, including Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk. The thing about games like this one is that the Oilers manage to showcase just enough offensive prowess to tantalize, only to get shut out again in the next game. 

For Thursday’s game against the Rangers, Sam Gagner will be moved to the top line where he will centre Ales Hemsky and the suddenly dominant Dustin Penner. No doubt Pat Quinn hopes putting his three top scoring forwards on one line will create a little more offence, although once again the line has been created more out of necessity than strategy. Penner is one of the few bright spots this  year, living up to his expectations finally after coming over from the Anaheim Ducks

 On a lighter note, the Oilers players had some fun during their Halloween celebrations, and left us with a story that will make any Oilers or Ottawa Senators fan laugh. Apparently Dustin Penner and Andrew Cogliano decided to make light of the Dany Heatley trade that they were nearly a part of. Cogliano decided to dress up as Dany Heatley, while Penner dressed as a Santa Claus, except that on his back was a name that read “no trade”. No trade clause, get it?

Edmonton Looking to Find Their Identity

This past week has been a bit of a rollercoaster for the Edmonton Oilers, who sandwiched a middling loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday between two convincing wins over the Nashville Predators on Monday and the Minnesota Wild on Friday.

On Wednesday night, the Edmonton Oilers lost to the Chicago Blackhawks 4-3 in what clearly proved to be a frustrating game for the team, and especially coach Pat Quinn. The score is flattering considering they were out-shot 38-19. Simply put, the Oilers were unable to match up with the skill level of the Hawks.

In what likely will be one of two contrasting possibilities for the team as the season progresses, Edmonton came out of the gate hitting hard and with lots of energy; however it made little impact as they quickly fell behind in the game. Meanwhile, we saw the other side of the coin in Monday’s game against the Nashville Predators and on Friday against Minnesota. The scores in those games were 6-1 and 5-2 respectively.

Of course, looking at these three games, it is easy to distinguish is the difference between a team like Chicago and teams like the Wild and the Predators. Nobody is arguing that those teams are operating at the same elite level where the Chicago franchise currently finds itself. Edmonton is a young team with a lot of moxie, but that won’t always be enough against a team with the talent and coaching of Chicago.

In the Chicago game, after evening the score 1-1 early in first on a nice goal by Andrew Cogliano, the Oilers consistantly found themselves under siege from Chicago’s star players. The only thing keeping the team in the game was the superior goaltending provided by ex-Hawk Nikolai Khabibulin. Later in the first period Jack Skille scored for the Hawks to take the lead, and they never looked back.

Edmonton’s game plan so far this year has been to forecheck hard and hit as much as possible, but this fell apart as soon as Chicago was able to adapt, moving the puck quickly and efficiently away from the defenders. Once they had it in the offensive zone, the Hawks were continually able to fight off the Edmonton defence to create scoring chances.

One thing to consider in discussing the Oilers’ results so far this season is that they are currently without the services of the alliterative pair of Steve Staios and Sheldon Souray, who are both out of the line-up after suffering concussions. Staios is one of the team’s best shutdown defensemen, while Souray is the team’s clear-cut number one defenseman. Souray is particularly crucial piece to be missing, as he can be counted on to play 25 plus minutes a game in all situations. While their presence won’t make the team a favourite for the Stanley Cup, they’re certainly missed right now.

These two injuries are likely to be short turn, but they bring up an interesting subject when it comes to the Edmonton Oilers. The team has been notoriously riddled with injuries in recent years, and again this year they are already dealing with the issue. Beyond Souray and Staios, the oft-injured Fernando Pisani is out indefinitely with back problems, while forward Marc Pouliot is out at least 10 weeks after undergoing hernia surgery. On top of all this, Ales Hemsky missed Friday’s game against the Wild with flu-like symptoms, and likely won’t play Monday.

Whatever the reasons may be for the Oilers’ injury woes, look for this storyline to become more prominent as the season wears on. Meanwhile, coaches Pat Quinn and Tom Renney will continue to try to take this energized but disorganized bunch and mould them into a contender. Only time will tell whether Oilers will muddle through the season as the team that showed up to play Chicago, or if they can coalesce into a unit that can make the Hawks start to look like the Predators.