Twelve goals. Two penalty shots. A fourth straight loss for the Edmonton Oilers.
The Florida Panthers won a wild one Monday night at Rogers Place, topping the Oilers 7-5.
Aside from the breakdowns defensively, Oilers goaltender Cam Talbot was hard on himself after the game after giving up six goals on 39 shots.
“I’d say about four of them I would have liked to have back,” Talbot said. “I mean anytime we go out and score five goals you should win a game every night and I didn’t give us a chance to win tonight. I liked our battle level, our compete, our resiliency — every time I let one in, we got one back. But I just couldn’t find that next save to give us a chance.”
Oilers captain Connor McDavid said it wasn’t all on his goaltender Monday night.
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“We’re giving up a bunch of goals. It’s more so how we are giving them up — you know, breakaways and open shots in the slot — I mean we aren’t really giving Talbot a chance,” McDavid said.
The Panthers opened the scoring on a power play with 2:14 left in the first when Aaron Ekblad flipped in a rebound off the backboards. The Oilers came back 49 seconds later. Yohann Auvitu’s point shot was stopped by James Reimer, but Patrick Maroon was there to tap in the rebound. McDavid drew the second assist.
Florida nearly retook the lead with 18 seconds left in the first. Jonathan Huberdeau’s shot hit the post and then bounced straight across the goal line before it hit the other post and was cleared by Milan Lucic.
Early in the second period, Leon Draisaitl was awarded a penalty shot after being tripped on a shorthanded breakaway by Mike Matheson. Draisaitl converted with a hard shot past Reimer’s blocker. Danis Malgin wristed a shot off Talbot’s glove less than four minutes later to make it 2-2. Drake Caggiula, back in the lineup and wearing a full shield because of a facial injury, restored the Oilers’ lead with a deflection goal at 9:35. However, the Panthers tied it just 23 seconds later on a wrist shot by Evgenii Dadonov.
The Oilers’ league-worst penalty kill cost them again early in the third. Vincent Trocheck converted a breakaway 18 seconds into the session. He added another power play goal at 6:05, but Anton Slepyshev got one back for the Oilers 48 seconds later.
Dadonov was awarded a penalty shot with 9:14 to go when he was slashed on a breakaway by Matt Benning. Dadonov beat Talbot to make it 6-4. McDavid gave the Oilers hope with his 23rd of the season with 5:02 left, but Trocheck completed the hat trick with one minute left.
“They have a lot of skill on that team and they get into a lot of run-and-gun-type games. We talked about that before the game that we wanted to kind of slow them down and slow the game down a little bit,” Trochek said after the win.
The Oilers (23-28-4) will visit the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.
-With files from Brenden Ullrich
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