from Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal,

Lights out now, we can put that playoff storyline to bed.

It’s never good reading when you’re down 4-zip after 31 minutes, you’re being pummelled 25-6 on the shot-clock, and you can easily fit the shooters into 140 characters in one tweet — Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zack Kassian, Kyle Brodziak, Ty Rattie and Joe Gambardella — but that’s the Edmonton Oilers lot in life when Ken Hitchcock says; “The team’s running on fumes.”

What the Edmonton Oilers coach really wanted to say was McDavid and Draisaitl are dead-tired from doing the heavy lifting and if they’re not doing it on one night because possible Selke winner Ryan O’Reilly and his Blues linemates Vladimir Tarasenko and Brayden Schenn have the puck more than they do, you lose 7-2.

They got two goals in the last 90 seconds of the second by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and the hard-nosed Kassian, the best of the foot soldiers for weeks now, both going to video replay to show the pucks under the pads of Jordan Binnington, which made the third period interesting down just a couple. But, that was it.

“I applaud our effort to come back (4-2) but their tenacity to defend is so good and they’re so deep they have guys on their fourth line (Alex Steen) who would have been on their second a year ago,” said Hitchcock.

continued

Below are the game highlights.