Oilers coach looks for better puck management heading into Lightning game

Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid, right, skates with the puck while Washington Capitals forward Pierre-Luc Dubois checks him during NHL action on Feb. 23, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Nick Wass/AP)

There’s a cure for the Edmonton Oilers' holiday hangover, and it involves more puck control.

That’s top of head coach Kris Knoblauch’s list of what’ll take the edge off the collective headache from the Oilers' first two games following a break for the 4 Nations Face-Off.

In both, Edmonton looked more like road kill rather than the killers who before the pause had fashioned a National Hockey League-best 22-8-2 record since the end of November.

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In back-to-back weekend matinees, the Oilers lost 7-3 in Washington, D.C., to the Capitals on Sunday after dropping their first game back from their two-week break 6-3 to the Flyers in Philadelphia.

“Puck management’s a big one, whether that’s in the offensive zone (or) defensive zone,” Knoblauch told media after practice Monday in Tampa Bay, Fla., where the Oilers will face the Lightning Tuesday.

He said his players “need to possess the puck” more, and when they’re not and they’re checking instead, they’ve “got to get into spots a little bit faster, because if you give anybody time and space, they’ll make plays.”

“We’ve got to put (more) pressure on the opposition to force them into making poor decisions with the puck,” Knoblauch said.

“They’re still going to make plays, but they’re going to make a lot less (if the Oilers apply more pressure.)”

Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse said Monday he and his teammates “haven’t been happy” with their play not just in the weekend games but in the stretch of games leading up to the 4 Nations break in which they outright lost to the likes of the powerhouse Toronto Maple Leafs and Colorado Avalanche, and eked out overtime wins over sub-.500 squads the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues.

“Everything starts on defence,” Nurse said. “As cliche as it sounds, good defence always leads to offence, and our group’s got to get back to focusing on that ...

“It’s getting back to the simple details, work ethic. I don’t think we’re very far away as a group at all. I think it’s making tweaks, the emotion that we bring to the rink and the details that we take care of on the ice each day. We take care of those, then the rest kind of takes care of itself.”

Veteran winger Corey Perry said Sunday after the loss to the Capitals that the Oilers need to take care of the “little things, the little battles, the little moments.”

“Those are not there right now and lacking, (but) we’ll find it,” said Perry, 40.

“Everybody knows how we can play, how good this group is when everybody’s playing the right way. The last probably six-and-a-half periods are not the right way, and if you recognize that, you can start to build and start to look up.”

Lightning on five-game heater

Brandon Hagel glanced over the NHL scoreboard before his club, the Tampa Bay Lightning, returned to action following the 4 Nations break, noting the high scores in action before their Sunday night game against the visiting Seattle Kraken.

“If you look at the scoreboards of the other games, the sevens, the eights, that’s what you’re seeing,” Hagel, a teammates of McDavid’s on Team Canada, said Sunday, referencing such games as the Capitals' 7-3 win over the Oilers, the Buffalo Sabres' 8-2 decision over the New York Rangers and the Capitals' 8-3 victory Saturday over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“For us to be able to come out here and get the first one is huge and continue that momentum.”

“That momentum” refers to Tampa’s five-game winning streak heading into Tuesday’s game. The Lightning had won four regulation games in a row, including back-to-back weekend victories immediately before the break, before Sunday’s 4-1 victory over the visiting Seattle Kraken.

Both Hagel and Lightning defenceman Ryan McDonaugh said their team still has post-vacation kinks to work out, however.

“We weren’t frustrated by our first period, but we knew we had to raise our level if we wanted to get going and we did that,” McDonagh said after Sunday’s game, which was scoreless after the first 20 minutes before Hagel opened the scoring midway through the second period on a shorthanded effort.

Tampa went up 3-0 midway through the third and held on for the win.

“You take two weeks off of no game action ... it’s never going to be easy,” Hagel said. “That’s just the reality of the game, but if we continue to work on it ... we’re going to find that groove like we had before.”