from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,
This is the script that meets every new coach in the National Hockey League, and on a sorry Sunday night in Los Angeles it played out once again, this time for Ken Hitchcock and his Edmonton Oilers.
“Today, the errors that we made were big errors,” Hitchcock declared after a 5-2 loss to the NHL’s 31st-place team — that had played and lost the night before. “We gave up a breakaway, we have up three two-on-ones … . We made big errors.”...
It’s the script, and it goes like this:
Team has issues, so it fires its coach. New coach comes in, and the players have an extra jump in their step, and a keener eye to detail. That lasts for two or three games, maybe a week, but eventually the team that got coach No. 1 fired returns, as it did Sunday night in a wasteful loss to a Kings team that doesn’t beat anybody, but beat Edmonton on the second end of a back-to-back and with star player Ilya Kovalchuk stapled to bench for the entire third period.
“In Anaheim (Friday) we never made the huge mistake,” Connor McDavid said of a game against the Ducks that was tied 0-0 before Ryan Nugent-Hopkins opened the scoring with 8:55 to play. “Tonight, they slip behind us one time, and they hang on. They did a good job shutting it down after they got the lead.”
Remember how Todd McLellan used to talk about how his team needed to “hold its cards” a little longer before folding?
Game highligths are below.
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