The good news is, they’re not the Vancouver Canucks. The Edmonton Oilers are no longer a team that plays hard for 40 minutes, blows a lead, and issues quote after post-game quote about how they competed hard, played well, and will take the lesson home and be better for it.
Finally, the Oilers expect to win. And blowing a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes does not have a bunch of guys telling us how well they played, or how close they were.
“You can say you played a good second (period), whatever you want,” said defenceman Tyson Barrie, who was dynamic Saturday with a goal and an assist. “At the end of the day that’s not the team you want to be, where you have a two-goal lead and you give it up with seven minutes to play. That’s a game we have to learn how to close out.”
Toronto turned a 3-1 deficit after 40 minutes into a puncher’s chance in overtime, and Auston Matthews banked a shot off of Leon Draisaitl, then Darnell Nurse, and then behind goalie Mike Smith, who was stellar in the OT loss. It was pinball perfection, after which Matthews submitted, “I’ll take it…”
It was the perfect example of a team that failed to close it down, let the opponent have a chance to have a really lucky break win them the game, then saw it all unfold.
This happens, even to good teams. But true contenders don’t let it happen in a first-place showdown like this one.
Right?
Sure, Toronto scored two goals on ridiculous bounces, and a third on a fortunate carom right onto William Nylander’s tape. That’s not an excuse for losing.
“You’ve got to create your bounces a little bit, too,” Draisaitl said. “Two bad bounces, but it shouldn’t lead to that, in overtime.”
Four straight losses to Toronto leaves the Oilers stirred, but not shaken.
“Of course we can beat that team. There’s no question about it,” Draisaitl said defiantly. “It’s a good team — we’re a really good team. It’s always tight games, but there no questioning in our heads if we can beat them.”
After losing three times to the Leafs in Edmonton, then holding a 3-1 lead with seven minutes to play, you hit another level of maturation. Not the Canucks’ level, where they’re trying to figure out how to contend in a game like this. But a contender level, where you want to be the team that others look at and say, “Man, we’re down 3-1 with seven minutes to play? This is over…”
“We didn’t play well enough to win the game. We gave up too many chances, didn’t execute well enough,” head coach Dave Tippett said, his standards not having been encroached upon by this performance. “We expect to play well every night. We have an expectation within our group that we can play with anybody. To come in and not play as well as we’d like, nobody is happy about that.
“It was a winnable game, even though we didn’t play very well, and we didn’t win it. We’ll re-rack and get back at it again Monday.”
In a rare twist, the improbable news broke Saturday morning that this would be Connor McDavid’s first-ever Saturday night game against the Leafs in Toronto. “The league usually runs us through here on a Monday or Tuesday,” he said.
After compiling but a single assist between them in that three-game debacle at Edmonton, Draisaitl and McDavid were the two most dangerous players on the ice Saturday. They combined for five points and were magical, while Barrie and Nurse gave Edmonton two goals from the blue line, a stat that is accompanied by the proverbial ‘W’ likely 90 per cent of the time.
Alas, the other three forward lines dropped the ball.
Dominik Kahun provided his nightly costly turnover on one goal, while second-line centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins went minus-2 without a shot on goal.
The level at which Edmonton’s two superstars play is sometimes unfathomable, and it won’t take much support to make this Oilers team into a Stanley Cup contender. But there isn’t enough below them at the moment, and we would expect Tippett to deploy them on separate lines in the rematch Monday night, after the Leafs’ second line scored twice to forge their comeback.
Edmonton has a good team, one that has played five games against Toronto this season that were basically coin flips.
But they’ve lost too many of them to say ‘they’re ready.’
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe remain undefeated in women’s doubles at the WTA Finals.
The 2023 U.S. Open champions, seeded second at the event, secured a 1-6, 7-6 (1), (11-9) super-tiebreak win over fourth-seeded Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in round-robin play on Tuesday.
The season-ending tournament features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.
Dabrowski and Routliffe lost the first set in 22 minutes but levelled the match by breaking Errani’s serve three times in the second, including at 6-5. They clinched victory with Routliffe saving a match point on her serve and Dabrowski ending Errani’s final serve-and-volley attempt.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face fifth-seeded Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Thursday, where a win would secure a spot in the semifinals.
The final is scheduled for Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 5, 2024.
EDMONTON – Jake Allen made 31 saves for his second shutout of the season and 26th of his career as the New Jersey Devils closed out their Western Canadian road trip with a 3-0 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.
Jesper Bratt had a goal and an assist and Stefan Noesen and Timo Meier also scored for the Devils (8-5-2) who have won three of their last four on the heels on a four-game losing skid.
The Oilers (6-6-1) had their modest two-game winning streak snapped.
Calvin Pickard made 13 stops between the pipes for Edmonton.
TAKEAWAYS
Devils: In addition to his goal, Bratt picked up his 12th assist of the young season to give him nine points in his last eight games and now 15 points overall. Nico Hischier remains in the team lead, picking up an assist of his own to give him 16 points for the campaign. He has a point in all but four games this season.
Oilers: Forward Leon Draisaitl was held pointless after recording six points in his previous two games and nine points in his previous four. Draisaitl usually has strong showings against the Devils, coming into the contest with an eight-game point streak against New Jersey and 11 goals in 17 games.
KEY MOMENT
New Jersey took a 2-0 lead on the power play with 3:26 remaining in the second period as Hischier made a nice feed into the slot to Bratt, who wired his third of the season past Pickard.
KEY RETURN?
Oilers star forward and captain Connor McDavid took part in the optional morning skate for the Oilers, leading to hopes that he may be back sooner rather than later. McDavid has been expected to be out for two to three weeks with an ankle injury suffered during the first shift of last Monday’s loss in Columbus.
OILERS DEAL FOR D-MAN
The Oilers have acquired defenceman Ronnie Attard from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for defenceman Ben Gleason.
The 6-foot-3 Attard has spent the past three season in the Flyers organization seeing action in 29 career games. The 25-year-old right-shot defender and Western Michigan University grad was originally selected by Philadelphia in the third round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. Attard will report to the Oilers’ AHL affiliate in Bakersfield.
UP NEXT
Devils: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.
Oilers: Host the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Patrick Mahomes threw for 291 yards and three touchdowns, and Kareem Hunt pounded into the end zone from two yards out in overtime to give the unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs a 30-24 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night.
DeAndre Hopkins had two touchdown receptions for the Chiefs (8-0), who drove through the rain for two fourth-quarter scores to take a 24-17 lead with 4:17 left. But then Kansas City watched as Baker Mayfield led the Bucs the other way in the final minute, hitting Ryan Miller in the end zone with 27 seconds to go in regulation time.
Tampa Bay (4-5) elected to kick the extra point and force overtime, rather than go for a two-point conversion and the win. And it cost the Buccaneers when Mayfield called tails and the coin flip was heads. Mahomes and the Chiefs took the ball, he was 5-for-5 passing on their drive in overtime, and Hunt finished his 106-yard rushing day with the deciding TD plunge.
Travis Kelce had 14 catches for 100 yards with girlfriend Taylor Swift watching from a suite, and Hopkins finished with eight catches for 86 yards as the Chiefs ran their winning streak to 14 dating to last season. They became the sixth Super Bowl champion to start 8-0 the following season.
Mayfield finished with 200 yards and two TDs passing for the Bucs, who have lost four of their last five.
It was a memorable first half for two players who had been waiting to play in Arrowhead Stadium.
The Bucs’ Rachaad White grew up about 10 minutes away in a tough part of Kansas City, but his family could never afford a ticket for him to see a game. He wound up on a circuitous path through Division II Nebraska-Kearney and a California junior college to Arizona State, where he eventually became of a third-round pick of Tampa Bay in the 2022 draft.
Two year later, White finally got into Arrowhead — and the end zone. He punctuated his seven-yard scoring run in the second quarter, which gave the Bucs a 7-3 lead, by nearly tossing the football into the second deck.
Then it was Hopkins’ turn in his first home game since arriving in Kansas City from a trade with the Titans.
The three-time All-Pro, who already had caught four passes, reeled in a third-down heave from Mahomes amid triple coverage for a 35-yard gain inside the Tampa Bay five-yard line. Three plays later, Mahomes found him in the back of the end zone, and Hopkins celebrated his first TD with the Chiefs with a dance from “Remember the Titans.”
Tampa Bay tried to seize control with consecutive scoring drives to start the second half. The first ended with a TD pass to Cade Otton, the latest tight end to shred the Chiefs, and Chase McLaughlin’s 47-yard field goal gave the Bucs a 17-10 lead.
The Chiefs answered in the fourth quarter. Mahomes marched them through the rain 70 yards for a tying touchdown pass, which he delivered to Samaje Perine while landing awkwardly and tweaking his left ankle, and then threw a laser to Hopkins on third-and-goal from the Buccaneers’ five-yard line to give Kansas City the lead.
Tampa Bay promptly went three-and-out, but its defence got the ball right back, and this time Mayfield calmly led his team down field. His capped the drive with a touchdown throw to Miller — his first career TD catch — with 27 seconds to go, and Tampa Bay elected to play for overtime.
UP NEXT
Buccaneers: Host the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
