“Boring” was a word that a lot of people used to describe Edmonton’s 3-1 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night. Dave Tippett is not one of those people. A day after his team moved to 2-3-0 on the season, Tippett was asked about his team’s lack of offense to start the season at five-on-five. His response? A varied form of ‘You are getting exactly what you asked for.’<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I heard all summer was you guys talking about how we couldn\u2019t defend,\u201d Tippett began. \u201cNow all I hear is that we can\u2019t score. That last game, that game (Wednesday), was a tightly-checked game. You had McDavid against Matthews all night, it was a tight-checking game. There wasn\u2019t space for either team.”<\/p>\n
The Oilers gave up just 26 shots in the victory, and surrendered just a single goal. The goal wasn’t exactly a great chance either. Zack Kassian got lazy on a puck and was beaten in a battle by Auston Matthews. Matthews put a shot from an odd angle towards goal, and caught Mikko Koskinen cheating off the post.<\/p>\n
Outside of that? Toronto created little five-on-five all night long.<\/p>\n
“Would we like to score more? Yeah we\u2019d like to score more, but the other team has a say in that, just like we had a say in Toronto not scoring,” Tippett continued. “You\u2019re always looking for things to improve, but it\u2019s almost funny to me how everybody talked all summer about how Toronto and Edmonton have to defend better, and then Toronto and Edmonton actually defend well and now they think it\u2019s a bad hockey game. It just baffles me sometimes to hear what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n