December 18, 2009
Oilers a Souray lot
Struggles continue with home loss to Nashville Predators after remarkable road trip ends

Daryl Katz could have three last-place teams by Christmas - the NHL Oilers, their AHL Springfield Falcons farm club and the junior Oil Kings.

All in the cellar. All in the basement.

Look at the standings. It's there.

The Oilers teased the town with those five consecutive wins on the road.

But now they're pretty much back where they were, one point out of last place in the Western Conference, with Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals drooling in the on-deck circle.

Can you imagine if the Oilers play like they did these first two games back against the NHL's best player and the NHL's top team, just how much fun Ovechkin and the boys are going to have in the Hockey Night In Canada game Saturday night?

Last night, the Oilers gassed an early 2-0 lead to the Nashville Predators and lost 6-3 in a pay-per-view game.

The pay-per-view should be Pat Quinn's press conferences. They're far better entertainment value than the actual games.

Last night, Sheldon Souray was his warm-up act in a dressing room pretty much vacated by all players other than two-goal-scorer Robert Nilsson and goaltender Jeff Deslaurier.

"We let off the gas," said Souray of being up 2-0. "They got a scolding from their coach in the time out, who told them to wake up. They woke up. We didn't push back at all. They scored a couple of goals. That took the air out of us.

"We just rolled over. We didn't have much of a collective effort after that. We just started to get a little more individual and play a little less as a team again," said Souray adding it's all part of a bigger-picture problem.

"Losing gracefully has been the standard here for a while," he said. "When we go on the road and put in hard work and have a team-first attitude, it raises our standards. Good teams have that level consistently. We're a team that takes two steps forward and two steps back and that gets you nothing. We don't want that to be acceptable.

"It's hard to be average then fight like dogs in March to make the playoffs. We should be working hard to be in fifth or sixth and have a bigger vision."

He said he's not sure what adjectives to apply to the team.

"Fragile. Complacent. Afraid to make mistakes."

Maybe they've all got Patrick O'Sullivan disease. Either they're not listening or they don't care.

"Some days we have good energy and good feelings and fight like we did on the road ... this should be a hard building to play against us," said Souray of the squad which is now 8-7-2 at home.

"You can see why Pat loses his temper," he added.

This night, after having done reasonable impressions of Mt. Orval Tessier the previous two days, Quinn was working hard to be much more even in his post-game analysis after yet another empty effort.

"Obviously we had a nice start," said the man who used to coach the Toronto Maple Leafs and inexplicably finds himself coaching them again.

"Then we got a little pressure come on. A couple of weak goals went in. We didn't bounce back," he began. "Three doorstep goals. We're not helping that kid in net.

"We gave them a power-play goal at the end of the second period. We keep doing that again and again.

"We've got to go back to the drawing board and see why our team breaks and not bends. Breaks and loses instead of bends and wins.

"I watched forwards get passes out of our own zone and carry it back in. We have to stop beating ourselves before we think about beating other teams."

He too spoke to the big picture.

"We're there. Then we're not there. That's why we've missed the playoffs so many times."

Check out those standings. They're not only missing them, they're back to knocking on the door to the basement along with the other teams in this organization.

And the fans are back to checking out the Central Scouting reports of the top draft choices and debating whether it would be better just to tank the rest of this season and get a future franchise player, making the giant assumption they wouldn't pick another Jason Bonsignore, Steve Kelly, etc., etc.

TERRY.JONES@SUNMEDIA.CA


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