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On a night that the out-of-town scoreboard on the fringes of Rogers Place lit up with a witches’ brew of Worst Possible Outcomes, the Edmonton Oilers did flat nothing to help their own cause on the ice below.

Key word: “flat”. In their last home game of 2023, the Oilers were slow out of the gate against a hungry crew of Florida Panthers. They gave up a goal before the first TV timeout, then two more in the final 62 seconds of a decisive opening frame. The first two were lovely goals by the visitors, but from the home team’s point of view all three were the result of defensive breakdowns. Case in point: the third Carolina goal in the period’s final minute, during which one unchecked Panther tipped a point shot from directly in front of Pickard before a second unchecked Panther slammed home the rebound. Meanwhile, Leon Draisaitl and Mattias Ekholm checked each other while right defenceman Evan Bouchard checked out the action from the left wing boards.

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That 3-0 hole was far too much to overcome, especially the way Sergei Bobrovsky was performing in the Panthers cage. Edmonton did get some good pushback in the middle 20, cut the deficit to 3-1, but once Sam Bennett restored the 3-goal margin with a powerplay breakaway — yes, you read that correctly — it was a done deal.

By night’s end, Edmonton netminder Calvin Pickard had been beaten five times, all of them well-executed if poorly-defended slot shots with that one breakaway deke sprinkled in. Hard to blame Pickard on any but maybe the fifth goal, a delayed release from Carter Verhaeghe that beat him short side 20 seconds into the third, but it’s also fair to say that Bobrovsky made maybe the five best stops of the game. Which is maybe about what might be expected in a contest with a $10 million stopper at one end and a league-minimum guy at the other.

Meanwhile, the news on that out-of-town scoreboard could hardly be worse. Three potential rivals in the Wild Card race recorded regulation wins over Eastern teams, allowing 3 goals among them. Three other all-Western games went undecided in regulation and were rewarded a third point courtesy the NHL’s Coackamamie Points System. The point count:

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• Wild, Predators, Blues, Coyotes, Flames, Kings, Jets — 2 points each
• Canucks, Stars, Kraken — 1
• Oilers, Avalanche — 0

Death by a thousand cuts.

The limp performance was enough to prompt changes in the forward lines at Sunday’s practice, including the break-up of what had been by some distance the best line in the NHL. More on the new combos in a bit.

Just this past Wednesday we were marveling at an eight-game Edmonton winning streak that pulled them right back to the playoff cut line after an atrocious start that threatened to sewer their season. The 5-man unit of Connor McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard was utterly dominant at 5v5. Both special teams were crushing it. Backed by solid-enough netminding and sturdy team defence, the Oil allowed just 13 goals in that entire win streak. All was well with the world.

Since then? A pair of regulation losses to their twin Florida nemeses, with the Oilers yielding a dozen goals over the six periods. Stu Skinner got lit up for 5 against the Lightning on Thursday with a couple of empty netters for dessert, then Pickard allowed a similar number on Saturday.

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Meanwhile, down on the farm, the other two healthy goalies in the system combined to give up 5 of their own in Bakersfield’s 5-2 loss at Coachella Valley on Saturday. Jack Campbell was the primary victim, allowing the first 4 in just half of the game before being yanked. Olivier Rodrigue, who was quickly beaten on a breakaway before cleaning up the rest of garbage time without further damage. But the game was already long gone by then.

Goaltending is far from the only problem here, but it is surely the lead item. From this distance Skinner is the best of the lot, but he needs more help than he’s been getting. He’s started 20 of Edmonton’s 28 games to this point, posting an .885 save percentage that lags far behind the .913 he recorded in each of his “rookie seasons”. He was just fine throughout that win streak before suffering a setback vs. the Bolts.

Overall, his 2023-24 campaign has been shaky at best, but he remains the surest bet Edmonton has. Pickard and Campbell have split time between the NHL and AHL, while Rodrigue has played (well) in limited action down on the farm, but has zero NHL experience.

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Campbell remains the biggest issue. He struggled in 5 NHL appearances (1-4-0, 4.50, .873) before being sent out, and he has kept right on struggling in the AHL (4-5-0, 3.46, .888 in 10 GP). The org keeps giving him the net in hopes that he turns things around, but the arrows have mostly been pointing in the wrong direction. Never moreso than on Saturday when the beleaguered netminder allowed three weak ones in rapid succession in a disastrous middle frame.

The bigger issue, of course, is Campbell’s contract. He may be buried in the minors, but 77% of his $5 million cap hit remains in Edmonton. With three more years to run after this one, need I add. That “buried penalty” of $3.85 million is greater than the cap hits of current Oiler stoppers Skinner and Pickard — combined.It’s a massive burden for a guy who stopped less than 89% of the shots he faced in the NHL a year ago, and in each of two leagues to this point in 2023-24. At this moment, that 5-year, $25 million signing looms as the biggest mistake of the Ken Holland years.

One thing to keep in mind as the Oilers look for solutions: the schedule is heavily backloaded. The Oil play just 46 times in the season’s first 120 days, then close hard with 36 contests in just 70 days. That’s the point that the situation will need to be resolved, because it will no longer be tenable for Skinner to get 70+% of the starts. Until then, there’s a bit more wiggle room, though in all honesty, the sooner the better.

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Waiver option declined

Lots of talk as to how the Oilers could best deal with the issue, but little action to this point beyond the switcheroo of Campbell for Pickard six weeks ago. The latest opportunity for a reset came and went at noon Sunday, when no claim was made — by the Oilers or any NHL team — on veteran backup Antti Raanta, waived Saturday by Carolina.

That too would have been a gamble, based on Raanta’s own dismal start to the current season that sees him carrying an awful .854 save percentage which ranks 69th and last among goalies to appear in at least 5 games this season. He’s been brutal for two months.

For the two years before that, however, he was top-notch. Last season, for instance, he played in 27 games, posting an exceptional 19-3-3 record with 2.23 GAA and .910 Sv% in 27 games. The prior season? 28 games with 15-5-4, 2.45, .912. Entering the current season he was a 10-year veteran of 253 NHL games with a .619 points percentage, 2.43 GAA, .918 Sv%. Quality.

This year, not so much. He was pulled from a home game against the Oilers for no specified reason on Nov 22 before delivering a performance for the ages in his very next game, also at home. In that one Raanta allowed 8 goals on just 14 shots, becoming the first NHL goalie in the save percentage era — which began in 1955 for pete’s sake — to play a full game and stop fewer than half of the shots he faced.

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Discard that game from his results and he still languishes at .875 in his other 13 appearances. He’s not been good.

Maybe his entire game has fallen off a cliff, in which case the right decision was made. He’s had a bad two months. But they were preceded by two fine seasons and more before that. His one-year contract at $1.5 million would have fit the Oilers roster simply by sending out Pickard and a minimum-contract forward such as Adam Erne. The acquisition cost would otherwise have been zero.

Other solutions may be out there, but they’re not likely to be free. What seems apparent from my couch is that the status quo is not a good situation for the Oilers. Stay tuned.

New forward lines

The outstanding RNH-McDavid-Hyman trio was broken up at Sunday’s practice not based on their own performance but by the obvious fact that the other lines need help. Draisaitl in particular has been floundering, spending the recent home stand playing with some combination of Evander Kane, Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark and Warren Foegele. During those 6 games, Drai was on the ice for just a single 5v5 goal for, 7 against. You might remember that goal, credited to Leon himself, when his cross-ice pass was expertly tipped home by Chicago Blackhawks defender Nikita Zaitsev. Something none of Draisaitl’s wingers have managed to do for weeks.

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None of the lines, even the loaded first unit, played particularly well on Saturday, especially defensively. So today a new top 6 was unveiled:

The key here is Nugent-Hopkins rejoining Draisaitl on a refreshed second unit. The two have plenty of experience together over the years, and enjoyed plenty of success in the process. Over the past five seasons starting with Draisaitl’s MVP season of 2019-20, they have played just under 20 hours together at 5v5, with the Oilers enjoying a 60% goal share on the strength of 77 for, 51 against.

Kane has been moved up to 1LW on the McDavid-Hyman line in an effort to get the power winger scoring again. In about 13 hours on McDavid’s wing, Kane has scored 17-12-29, about 1.3 goals and 2.25 points per 60. The duo has recorded a positive though narrow goal sahre of 42 for, 38 against. Hyman, who leads the Oilers with 18 goals, remains stapled to McDavid’s right side.

The third line defaults to Ryan McLeod between Janmark and Brown, a defensively-conscious trio who among them have just 3 goals all year. The fourth line has been tweaked for now with the insertion of Erne on the wing after Derek Ryan left Saturday’s game early. Maybe a maintenance day, maybe he’ll miss some time,

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The defence pairings appear to be unchanged, with Skinner predictably in the starters net as the Oilers prepare for an east coast road trip that includes their first back-to-back of the entire season.

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