The Edmonton Oilers season got off to a rocky start Wednesday with a 8-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks in their opening game.
The Oilers, touted as one of the Stanley Cup favourites, fell down 4-0 less than halfway through in the second period, replacing starter Jack Campbell with Stuart Skinner, who allowed the same number of goals.
“We laid an egg tonight. We all own it,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said post-game. “We're all in in this one together, and the bottom line is we were at a preseason level of work ethic and a preseason level of execution, all of us, and we got a lesson in regular-season work ethic and regular-season battle level and we were not good enough tonight to a man. Every single one of us.”
Campbell and Skinner both allowed four goals on 16 shots faced with Canucks winger Brock Boeser beating Campbell for three of his four goals on the night.
“We're trying to stem the tide a little bit, change momentum,” Woodcroft added of the goaltending change. “It didn't work. We didn't get much better.”
After running away with the Rocket Richard and Art Ross trophies last season with 64 goals and 153 points, Oilers star Connor McDavid was held in check Wednesday. The 26-year-old centre, who was minus-3 on the night, assisted on the team's lone goal of the night, a power play marker from Leon Draisaitl.
“Not sure how to explain that start to your season,” McDavid said. “We obviously want to learn from it. We want to see where things went wrong and learn from it and get ready to go again.
"We play Saturday (against the Canucks), excited to play at home, excited to play these guys again, another opportunity to redeem ourselves.”
