One Down...Four to Go

While the shot clock may have heavily favoured the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday evening in Philadelphia, it was not a true indication of how poorly this team looked in falling 4-1 to the Flyers. 

Padding your shot total is all well and good but when a team finds themselves in a three goal hole after all of twenty-five minutes, taking much of anything they accomplish over the final thirty-five minutes of play is generally not the wisest of decisions. 

Also, let’s not forget, they were facing a team with a badly depleted blueline and one that had yet to find their stride over the opening month of the season and yet they had little trouble in jumping all over the Oilers during the first period of play. 

Viktor Fasth struggled mightily in his return to the crease, allowing four goals on twenty-five shots in his first start since injuring his groin against the Los Angeles Kings. The thirty-two year Swedish netminder coughed up a pair of weak and ill-timed goals against that ultimately put his team behind the eight-ball on two separate occasions. 

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was the only Oiler who managed to find the back of the net on Flyers starter Steve Mason, who stopped thirty-five of the thirty-six pucks fired his way in earning his first victory of the season. Edmonton was without their scoring leader and best player in Taylor Hall, courtesy of a knee injury he suffered on Saturday night against the Vancouver Canucks, and not surprisingly, his absence was felt from start to finish. 

After losing their first five games of the season and then following that up with a four game win streak, the Oilers have now lost three straight. With Hall out of the lineup and this group set to play their next four games over a six day span against the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, New York Rangers and Nashville Predators , expecting them to do much in the way of winning over the next weeks could be an awfully big stretch. 

With that said, below is your chance to have your say and rate the players and coach on their performance during tonight’s game and something tells me it could get ugly.