EDMONTON — Edmonton Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft defended his team’s new defensive system on Wednesday, a day after dropping to 1-4-1 this season following a 7-4 loss at the Minnesota Wild.
Without captain Connor McDavid, who is out 1-2 weeks with an upper-body injury, the Oilers gave up five third-period goals in Minnesota for their third straight loss (0-2-1).
Edmonton, which implemented a new defensive system this season, has been outscored 27-17 through its first six games and is seventh in the Pacific Division.
“I would say the term for it, you guys in the media call it a ‘zone,’” Woodcroft said of the new system. “I would say it was popularized by a team that had the best record in the NHL last year in [the Boston Bruins], so a lot of similarities there. I think through training camp and through the first five games of the regular season, it had performed pretty well. I think through five games we gave up one defensive-zone goal.
“Last night, it wasn’t good enough. Part of that is on us, and part of that is a credit to the other team that did some unique things, some good things and their top players found a way to break it. But there are certainly some areas where we can be better in that coverage.”
Hosting the New York Rangers at Rogers Place on Thursday (9 p.m. ET; TVAS, SN1, MSG), and then playing in the 2023 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic against the Calgary Flames at Commonwealth Stadium on Sunday (7 p.m. ET; TVAS, SN, TBS, MAX), the Oilers are trying to find answers for their slow start.
There was some debate in the media availability over what constitutes a defensive-zone goal. Edmonton lost its opening game of the season 8-1 at the Vancouver Canucks and were also thoroughly outplayed in a 4-1 loss at the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 19.
A number of goals conceded in those games came off breakdowns in front of the Oilers net, but Woodcroft would not concede calling those defensive-zone goals. He said he does not consider goals resulting from turnovers, on the rush, or special teams, defensive-zone goals.
According to Woodcroft, the system is not to blame.
“I think it is a different system, it’s a system that was embraced by everybody in our organization as an area we wanted to go to,” Woodcroft said. “Through five games in the regular season we gave up one goal in that coverage, in the defensive zone. Yesterday we gave up a few, certainly we can be better, but for me, anytime you’re working through a new way of doing things there’s growing pains. Through five games we gave up one goal.”
Edmonton is expected to be without McDavid against the Rangers, who defeated the Calgary Flames 3-1 in the second of a five-game road trip Tuesday. The Rangers opened their longest road trip of the season with a 4-1 win against the Seattle Kraken this past Saturday.
McDavid’s participation in the Heritage Classic, however, has not been ruled out as he works his way back from injury.
He sustained his injury in a 3-2 overtime loss against the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday skating up the ice to join a rush. McDavid grabbed at his left side as he crossed the Winnipeg blue line, finished his shift and skated to the bench with 4:20 remaining in the third period. He sat on the bench for the remainder of the third and did not participate in the 3-on-3 overtime despite going out for a short skate prior to the session to gauge the injury.
“I saw him this morning briefly, I said hi. He seems to be in good spirits, but no medical update,” Woodcroft said. “I think with Connor, I would never want to put a timeline on him and his healing ability. He’s a pretty determined individual, and we’ll see how well he heals here.”
With McDavid, forward Leon Draisaitl — the top two scorers in the NHL last season — and the majority of its roster back, the Oilers were considered a Stanley Cup contender entering this season.
Things have not gone according to plan so far and concern is starting to set in among the Oilers’ fan base.
“I think things get magnified when your record is what our record is,” Woodcroft said. “If you’re sitting at 4-1 heading into last night’s game, you would chalk last night into one bad period. But it feels different when your record is what our record is right now.”
Woodcroft believes his team will respond to the early adversity and get the season back on track. The Oilers already trail the Vegas Golden Knights by 11 points in the division standings. The Golden Knights are off to a perfect 7-0-0 start.
“We can use that in different ways,” Woodcroft said. “We can get past the mad and be solutions-based or problem-solving based. Or we can wallow in ‘woe is us.’ I think our players understand where we’re at. We have to take a step, but talk is cheap, we have to show it.”
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
