Edmonton Oilers getting sloppy, losing their grip on Golden Knights

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The numbers are still in their favour, but it feels like it might be slipping a little, that grip the Edmonton Oilers had on this series.

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You can see a little of that sloppiness that put them on their heels in the first two games against Los Angeles creeping back into their game.

The turnovers, the long offensive lapses, the part where they lose focus and surrender a couple of quick goals and the costly late-game breakdown, all of which came back to haunt them in Saturday’s last-second, mind-bending 4-3 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

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Doesn’t mean it’s permanent. Doesn’t mean it’ll be the same in Game 4. It’s just the reason Vegas is right back in the series.

“We’re up 2-1,” said Zach Hyman. “And we should probably be up 2-1. If we were up 3-0 it would have been great but I think we’re in a good spot.”

Indeed. The Oilers still have a 2-1 lead and if you offered them that deal before it started they’d have jumped at it, but if they play the next game like they played the last two, the deal gets a lot worse.

“It was a lot of shooting ourselves in the foot, whether it was reads or decisions, “ defenceman Darnell Nurse said in the team’s Sunday morning media availability.

“We definitely have to be better in that department. Having said that, we’re in a great spot in the series. We have been doing some good things and playing some good hockey.”

They are. But you can feel things starting to shift a little. Edmonton dominated Game 1, but Vegas was the better team over most of Games 2 and 3.

Is this the natural ebb and flow of a playoff series or are the Oilers drifting away from the stuff that had them on a six-game win streak.

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“There are definitely areas of our game we have to be better at,” said Nurse. “You don’t get the win when you’re not playing the right way for a full 60. And that’s a good team that we’re playing in Vegas. You give them opportunities and they’re going to capitalize.

“They’re a team that’s been through this just as much as we have and has had success. Knowing that the opponent is not going to go away, we have to make sure for a full 60 minutes that we’re not getting off the gas, either.”

Scoring the game-winning goal with 0.4 seconds left to stave off a possible 3-0 deficit is the kind of thing that can inject even more energy into a team that already knows how to win.

The Oilers know this because they were just on the other side of it. They scored with 29 seconds left in regulation and won in overtime to avoid going down 3-1 against Los Angeles. Two games later the Kings were eliminated.

How do they not let the Knights feed off of this the same way? How do the Oilers shake off the shock of losing that way?

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“You’re not going to win 16 games in a row, that’s not how this league works,” said Nurse. “The teams and players you’re against are way too good. There are going to be highs and lows.

“When you do face any type of hardness over the course of a playoff run, it’s your response the next day. For us it’s tomorrow.”

The Oilers are at a fork in the road heading into Game 4. They either tighten up and get back to what they were in Game 1, dominant, or they find themselves in a best-of-three against a rival that just robbed them of all their momentum.

Monday night is huge. The difference between 3-1 and 2-2 in a playoff series is like the difference between jumping out of an airplane with a parachute and jumping out of an airplane with a fish tank.

“We just have to go out and play,” said Hyman. “We have a formula that works and we have to get back to it.”

Now is the time. The longer the Oilers wait to push back, the harder it gets. They have to dial it up because that’s what Vegas is doing.

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“We played really well in Game 1 but it would be fair to say that they didn’t bring their best,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We knew they were going to get better. In Game 2 we got outplayed and we were fortunate to win that. Game 3, looking at the scoring chances, that game could have gone either way.

“We know we have to be better collectively next game and for Game 5. Because we have a lot of respect for Vegas, they’re a good team, well coached, a lot of veteran players and they play a good, solid game. It’s not ever going to be easy.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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