It has been the kind of start that the Management, Coaching Staff, Players, and Fans told themselves all summer just couldn’t happen again. I mean what were the odds of Edmonton’s goaltending failing them to the tune of sub-ECHL levels for the second straight October? The Oilers used 6 goalies last year and settled on two that performed well enough in NHL games with the club to suggest they could at least be average. Well 4 games in the Oilers are winless in a string of games where they should have been 2-2 at minimum. With 78 games remaining on the schedule the season already feels like it’s on the line and something has to be done.
That might seem alarmist, but the Oilers were already out of contention for the playoffs in November of last season. The club is headed in the same direction now and somebody will be paying the price for it. This is the 2nd season in a row where the team’s defacto starter trained with goaltender coach Fred Chabot and came out of the gate looking like a Beer League backup. When Scrivens came from his last organization he joined the Oilers and stood on his head, slowly decreasing in effectiveness the longer he stayed here.
Perhaps Chabot isn’t the problem at all but the optics aren’t good for him right now and the Coach has to be feeling the heat. It’s not as if Dallas Eakins has been making all the right decisions out there and he carries no blame with him for this record. He has bizarrely made his roster weaker than necessary, played superior players less than inferior ones, and wasted all of Training Camp by using it as a selection camp instead of the time to prep his club for the year ahead.
Eakins’ predictably bad choices would have been overlooked if the team was winning, but with losses mounting already it just looks like a coach trying to outsmart the rest of the league and re-invent the wheel. Personally, if I was part of the Management team that gifted Eakins 6 NHL Defensemen in Oiler uniforms for the 1st time since Pronger was leading the blueline I would be upset that my Coach sent parts of it away to the minors or to the Pressbox in October. Like I said, if he was winning Eakins could defend his decisions pretty easily.
Something has to give soon. Either Scrivens starts playing like an honest to goodness NHL goaltender or somebody will lose their job. It will either be Scrivens himself, his positional coach Fred Chabot, or the Head Coach Dallas Eakins.
This was the worst case scenario for the Oilers. All of the work being done by the skaters is being undone by the failures of a single position. It isn’t about Grade A chances or the Swarm. It’s about the supposed 1A goaltender posting a .785 sv% against a Coyotes team that wasn’t playing top notch hockey. This is about a season that is already under threat after just 2 weeks. This is about 8 years outside of the playoffs and fans throwing jerseys on the ice in protest.
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