October 18, 2022 by Ryan Lotsberg

The slow start continues for the Edmonton Oilers. I was worried about this game coming into it because of how sloppy the Oilers have been to start the season and because our own Jeff Ade (@ade780) has been talking about how underrated the Buffalo Sabres are. It turns out that I was right to be worried. The Sabres withstood a furious flurry from the Oilers late in the game to hold on for a 4-2 victory at Rogers Place. Once again, it was too little too late for the Oilers. The train is slipping off the rails early in Edmonton.

Call Outs:

Leon Draisaitl gave the puck away at or just inside the offensive blue line twice, and both turnovers resulted in goals against. He tried to force a pass to the middle of the ice and lost the puck on the first one. He was almost able to strip the puck off Tage Thompson from behind, but Thompson walked between him and Darnell Nurse before tucking it around Stuart Skinner for the goal. Draisaitl carried the puck down the right wing before attempting a pass back to Kailer Yamamoto trailing the play, but the pass was in Yamamoto’s feet. The pass didn’t click, and JJ Peterka got a clear cut breakaway as a result. Peterka made no mistake on the play. Draisaitl can’t make those mistakes.

Standouts:

This section is usually reserved for positive stories from the game. Darnell Nurse’s play stood out, but it wasn’t always in a positive way. He scored a goal and got a few other chances from jumping up into the play. However, he got walked on the Thompson goal and he gave the puck away to Alex Tuch at the offensive blue line that led to another breakaway. Nurse was able to do enough to disrupt the breakaway. He also took a slashing penalty with about seven minutes left in the third period. It was a high event night for Nurse, which isn’t a compliment.

Shout Outs:

Like Nurse, Evander Kane also had several scoring chances throughout the game. He was in the blue paint all night long. He did a lot of good things, but he couldn’t score. I don’t think he knew that he would become snake bitten when he made that drop pass to Connor McDavid for his hat trick goal on opening night.

Jesse Puljujarvi had a great scoring chance on a rebound from a Tyson Barrie shot. He made a crisp pass to Draisaitl to get through the neutral zone on that play. Puljujarvi hustled to a puck and was able to poke it to Zach Hyman for a glorious scoring chance in the second period. The points haven’t come for Puljujarvi yet, but he’s doing lots of little things well.

This also goes against normal practice for these articles, but Ièll give a shout out to Eric Comrie for one hell of a game. The Edmonton native made 46 saves on 48 shots against in the first game where two goalies from Edmonton played against each other.

An unfortunate note from this game was that Dylan Holloway got absolutely obliterated by Ilya Lyubushkin in the neutral zone. Warren Foegele cleared the puck up the boards, and Holloway skted into it. The rookie got his head up at the last second, but it was too late. He left the game and did not return. I suspect that he has a concussion. Hopefully he returns to the lineup soon.

The good news about this game was that the Oilers didn’t fall behind by three goals. However, they allowed the first goal four minutes into the game. Allowing early goals has been a trend already in this young season. They also continued the trend of playing down to their opponents, which has been a thing in Edmonton for many years. They will have to live up to the other half of that trend by playing up to the standard of really good teams on Thursday when they take on the Carolina Hurricanes.