We probably should have known exactly what was going to happen at Rogers Place on Thursday (Nov. 21) night when the Edmonton Oilers hosted the Minnesota Wild.
As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And the Oilers have already fooled us several times this fall.
The latest such instance saw the Oilers lose 5-3 to Minnesota, in a game that wasn’t anywhere near that close. The loss drops Edmonton to 10-9-2, and much like the score Thursday, that record flatters the Oilers.
With 21 games played, captain Connor McDavid’s team is now more than one-quarter of the way through its 2024-25 schedule, and the consistently inconsistent Oilers remain stuck in the mud, spinning their wheels.
Every time it seems like the defending Western Conference champions might be getting on track, as appeared to be the case with their impressive and encouraging 5-2 road win over the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday (Nov. 19), the Oilers follow up with a stinker like Thursday’s loss to the Wild. Edmonton has yet to win back-to-back games in regulation this season.
Here’s some good, some bad, and mostly ugly from what Oilers fans suffered through in downtown Edmonton on Thursday evening.
Horrendous at Home
The Oilers are now 4-6-1 at Rogers Place, leaving them tied for 28th in the NHL with a home points percentage of just .409. They have just one regulation win at home, the fewest in the Western Conference.
Edmonton’s home goal differential of minus-1.18 per game is the worst in the league. Among all 32 NHL teams, the Oilers are scoring the second-fewest goals per game at home, 2.27 and allowing the sixth-most goals per game at home, 3.45.
These numbers are even more maddening when contrasted with how well the Oilers have performed away from their home rink: Edmonton’s road record of 6-3-1 is among the best in the NHL; and the Oilers are averaging 3.30 goals on the road, an increase of more than one per game from their scoring output at Rogers Place.
Another Lost Lead
Those aren’t the only baffling statistics making Oilers fans want to pull their hair out. Let’s talk about another issue that reared its ugly head on Thursday: playing with the lead.
Oilers Leon Draisaitl
3rd career goal within the first :30 of a game pic.twitter.com/pcabOhJaPz
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) November 22, 2024
Edmonton received a gift…
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