Four Straight Losses Have Oilers Reeling

Remember that nice start by the Edmonton Oilers? Remember how this team survived an incredibly tough stretch in October and sat with an 8-4-1 record? That’s all gone now, as the Oil are 8-8-1 and sitting outside of a playoff spot.

The club has now lost four straight games, and looked terrible in the process. The effort was completely non-existent on Thursday night in Florida, which was followed up by a game that essentially ended just 26 seconds in on Sunday night. The Oilers aren’t a great hockey team to begin with, the roster simply isn’t good enough, but they are playing like a lottery team right now.

In year four of the Connor McDavid era, that simply cannot be acceptable. The boo birds were out in full effect last night at Rogers Place, and sooner or later the fanbase will turn on this team if the effort doesn’t improve and the wins don’t begin to flow again.

At 8-8-1, the season is far from over. On a four game losing streak where this team looks like it doesn’t care half the time and is playing to get the coach fired? That has to be concerning.

Goodbye To Todd?:

The Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks each failed to meet expectations at the start of this season. The results? Someone paid the price, with the head coach being out of a job in both cities before the calendar flipped to Thanksgiving in the States. I would argue both of those coaches were coming off of seasons better than Todd McLellan’s a year ago, and both paid the price for not getting their team going early this season.

The Edmonton Oilers were an unmitigated disaster a season ago, failing miserably after seemingly taking a step forward. The start to this season was mildly encouraging, with the team not just surviving but thriving through a tough month of October. The wind is completely out of the sails now, however, and the month of November looks an awful lot like so many nights last season.

The Oilers weren’t ready to play Sunday night, giving up a goal just 26 seconds in. That’s baffling, considering how poorly the last three games of their road trip out east were. The Oilers should have been desperate and ready to rock against another struggling team. Instead? They allowed Colorado to walk into their building and spank them for 60 straight minutes. The Oilers weren’t ready to play, they looked completely lost.

That is on the players, yes, but it is also on the coach. This is McLellan’s fourth year at the helm in Edmonton and his team still struggles to be ready on a nightly basis. On top of that, and far worse in my opinion, these Oilers look completely and utterly lost on most nights. Sometimes it seems like they don’t know what the hell the system wants them to do, and they can’t even line up correctly. There seems to be confusion, and guys seem to be struggling to figure things out.

The amazing part about that? This was an issue last year as well. It seemed like guys last season couldn’t figure out the system and looked lost. How there hasn’t been adjustment, of the players/head coach/system, is beyond me.

You all saw what Iiro Pakarinen had to say yesterday too, there is no communication from manager Todd about what is going on.

This roster isn’t great, and Peter Chiarelli needs to take blame for that and answer the music come season’s end should this group fail to make the playoffs. That said, the Edmonton Oilers are a poorly coached team in the National Hockey League. Todd McLellan is simply not getting the most out of this roster.

So….Now What?:

Ideally McLellan is given his walking papers today, with Joel Quenneville replacing him as head coach. That’s the dream, but reality is likely to be far from that.

Peter Chiarelli has never fired a coach mid-season during his GM’ing career, in fact he’s only made a head coaching change ONCE before. That came in 2007, when Chiarelli fired Dave Lewis after just one season in Boston. He replaced him with Claude Julien, who outlasted Chiarelli with the Bruins.

History tells us to not expect a coaching change, but rather to expect a trade when it comes to this GM trying to shake up his group. I’d argue he needs both right now. Change the coach and add a veteran right winger to fill the gap left by Kailer Yamamoto and Jesse Puljujarvi’s departures to the AHL.

A loss tomorrow night to Montreal, with the club off until Saturday after that, will make things very interesting.