Oilers, Penguins eager to put surprisingly poor starts behind them

Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid (97), Evan Bouchard (2) and Zach Hyman (18) celebrate a goal against the Carolina Hurricanes during second period NHL action in Edmonton on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (Jason Franson / The Canadian Press)

A pair of struggling teams desperate to change their fortunes will hit the ice when the Edmonton Oilers play host to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday.

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Both the Oilers and Penguins are on a quest to rebound from disappointing extra-time setbacks in their last outing.

The Penguins arrive after surrendering a lead in the final minute of regulation en route to a 4-3 shootout loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday, while the Oilers wasted a two-goal third-period lead in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes that same evening.

Edmonton, which came into the season with high hopes after reaching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, has only two wins in seven games and owns the third-worst goal differential in the NHL (minus-13).

Despite the struggles, the message is to remain calm. After all, this is a team that rebounded from a month-long skid last season before changing its fortunes.

"I'm completely confident in our group," defenseman Mattias Ekholm said. "I know it's early in the year and it's a matter of working through it, and I wasn't expecting everybody to be firing where we left off or whatnot. It's going to take a little bit of time, but I do like our team and I think we're on the right track."

The Oilers are surprisingly struggling with the man-advantage. Their vaunted power play has scored only twice this season (2-for-19) and is tied for 27th in the league at 10.5 percent, and personnel changes are being tried in the past couple of practices.

"With the way their season has gone, there's been a lot of things to address: the power play, the penalty kill, scoring goals," coach Kris Knoblauch said. "(The power play) was one thing that I didn't anticipate that we were going to have problems doing."

The Penguins, who are winless in three games, have their own concerns, having opened a four-game road trip with consecutive defeats. However, they had every chance to win in Calgary.

"Obviously there's opportunity to get better, but I think we were a heck of a lot better than we have been in recent games," forward Bryan Rust said. "We didn't have huge, massive breakdowns like we did in the last three or four games, or whatever it was. So, I think that we're definitely making strides."

Even though the Penguins wasted a pair of third-period leads, they held momentum for most of the clash, especially the third period. They were just unable to find the insurance goal while outshooting the Flames 38-25 through overtime, nor the winning tally in the shootout.

"We had that five-on-five mentality -- go in there and outwork them, get the puck out of the corner -- and we score," Rust said. "I think we needed a little bit more of that. It wasn't there as consistently as we would have liked. ... It's still a work in progress, but I think the intentions are there. I think we're trying to play with a little bit more pace. We're trying to get things going in the right direction."

That said, the Penguins have a glaring issue that must be addressed. No team has surrendered more goals than Pittsburgh, and even though goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic showed last game that he may be the one who can solidify that position, he was unable to hold the fort to the final buzzer.

"I got to do a better job of staying on pucks and just bailing us out there," Nedeljkovic said. "I mean, it wasn't a very difficult shot (on Nazem Kadri's late game-tying goal). It wasn't a very hard shot or a very well-placed shot. It was just a puck on net, so, not much else to it than that."