NorwegianOiler: Phoenix put up a good effort. They had the tightest gap control I’ve seen in a long while. Our players rarely got any time with the puck.Our forwards got closed off at the boards a lot – seeing Hall get hit on their blueline trying to enter the zone gave me flashbacks of Cogliano and Cole doing the exact same thing – unsuccessfully. They weren’t giving themselves many options but to try to run through the defenseman. Rarely works…

Very accurate observations N.O. , the Coyotes certainly deserve props for how well they played their system. Still think the Oilers would have fared better if they could have got their heads & legs into the game earlier but on that night the team that stuck the closest to their systems won!

Yes! What were they up to 6 on 5?

1. Tuebert had another 5 hits in limited ice time
2. Hopkins seems to have the ability to force things to happen, hopefully he will get more consistant with this and it’s a sign of things to come.
3. The team fights back more now, going behind like that last year would have ended up with a blowout

Negatives

1. Petry is still inconsistant at NHL level
2. Secondary scoring line MPS, Belanger and Gagner have to start scoring, just creating isn’t enough when we can’t line match as effectively on the road.
3. Dubnyk still seems to glide a little out of position when going east west in net, which caused the soft first goal.
4. Lack of a game plan with the empty net.

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also how the hell did they miss the cross check on Jones at the end of the 3rd, that would essentially have been a 2 man advantage for a power play at a critical point in the game.

Our forwards got closed off at the boards a lot – seeing Hall get hit on their blueline trying to enter the zone gave me flashbacks of Cogliano and Cole doing the exact same thing – unsuccessfully. They weren’t giving themselves many options but to try to run through the defenseman. Rarely works…