The Edmonton Oilers season opener came on style but closed on a sour note.  Throughout the game the Oilers were showing a lot of grit and toughness as they jumped on the Calgary Flames.  In fact the Oilers out shot and out chanced the Flames.

The Flames however dominated early as they jumped out to a 3-1 lead, but the Oilers battled back with goals from Gilbert Brule and Sam Gagner.

However, the talking point of the night was the last minute of the game.  The Oilers pressing, Sam Gagner got possession of the puck in the Flames zone.  He then put a nice pass on the stick of Patrick O’Sullivan who missed a wide open shot at the net.

Then the puck was cleared and as it went down the ice David Moss closing in Nikolai Khabibulin tried to clear the puck to Sheldon Souray only to have the puck misfire and Moss tap it into the open net.

As Khabibulin pounded his stick on the net the Flames found themselves up 4-3 with only a few seconds left as they held on to win the game.

The real culprit in the loss was the same defence which struggled last season when under pressure in the Oilers zone.  Especially Tom Gilbert who was very good in the offensive zone but fell apart often in his own zone at times.

If one game is any judge the more things change.  The more they remain the same, as Gilbert and Denis Grebeshkov were unable to push the puck up the ice without struggling in their own zone.

Another problem was clearance passes which Calgary was able to jump on and cause at least two goals through this pressure.  All of this adds up when the Flames were on the power play scoring twice.

“We need to learn not to beat ourselves,” Coach Pat Quinn said to the CBC after the game.  For the Oilers that had better be their mantra.

Ryan Stone and Mike Comrie left good impressions as Stone played physical and Comrie got a point on the first goal.  Patrick O’Sullivan also had a good game though seemed snake bit on a number of occasions.

Sam Gagner also had a good night as he almost had a Gordie Howe hat trick.  In what was completely out of character the diminutive forward got into a good scrap with Craig Conroy surprising just about everyone in the building.

The Oilers next game is against the Dallas Stars on Tuesday.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.