COLUMBUS — Good hockey? Not hardly.
But, then again, what do you expect when the 14th place team in the West plays the 15th place team in the west. Poetry on ice?
No. At best, this was a dirty limerick.
But bad hockey can still be plenty absorbing, and these two bottom dwellers captured everyone’s attention Monday night when they decided to trade scoring chances like a couple of half-drunk finalists in a tough man competition trade punches.
It wasn’t pretty, but the off-balance slugfest sure was fun to watch.
“It was a somewhat sloppy game for both teams,” Oilers defenceman Taylor Chorney said after the 5-3 loss to Columbus. “How many breakaways did (Devan Dubnyk) have to stop? Five breakaways? How many two on ones? He kept us in the game. It could have been a lot worse.”
It was bad enough.
“It was like line rushes for both teams,” said head coach Pat Quinn, who’s been preaching tighter defence for about 70 games now and it still hasn’t sunk in. “It was competitive, it should have been entertaining upstairs, but at the start of the third period our veterans let us down a little bit - two quick goals in the first few minutes, both turnovers, both bad checking. At the end of the day, very disappointing.”
The Ethan Moreau, Shawn Horcoff, Mike Comrie line was on for the third and fourth Columbus goals on consecutive shifts.
“That seems to be the way we’ve played this year,” said Quinn. “Not finding ways to play in games the other team is not sure it wants to win, either. At the end of the night in a game that’s up for grabs, we don’t grab it. And on a night like tonight it was our veterans who kind of let it get away on us.”
Former Calgary Flame Kristian Huselius got a dig in at his old Battle of Alberta buddies, scoring a goal and three assists in the win.
“When you’ve played for Calgary, you always have it in you when you play Edmonton,” he laughed.
Former Flame Aaron Johnson countered with a goal and an assist in the losing effort. Dustin Penner and Robert Nilsson had the other Edmonton goals.
“We came into this game wanting to get Dubie his first win of the season — that was our goal from the start of the game,” sighed Johnson. “But we couldn’t get it done. There were a few times we just got caught out of position.”
All you need to know about the Oilers on this night happened in a 30 second span in the second period, when they gave up two breakaways on the same shift. Dubnyk, looking for his first NHL win after a 0-7-2 start, stopped Fedor Tyutin and Kristian Huselius, among other fantastic saves, but didn’t get much help from a team gave up enough odd-man rushes and wide-open looks to last a month. He had zero chance on the first and third Columbus goals, cross-ice one-timers to wide open shooters, but let in a couple of pedestrian shots from Huselius and Chris Clark.
“Just a shot that caught me in a bad spot and went in,” said Dubnyk. “Obviously I need to keep those out. I don’t know what else to say.”
“That’s what our kids have been doing, making a lot of big saves and then having some kind of goofy one go in on them,” said Quinn. “That’s the next step for them, too, make the ones that look like they should make. But there were a couple of dangerous rushes that he handled extremely well.”
robert.tychkowski@sunmedia.ca
