Oilers, Rangers face offensive challenges
Last Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2009 | 11:25 AM ET
By Justin Piercy, CBC Sports
Edmonton's Ethan Moreau, left, scored the team's only goal in the 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Monday. The Oilers were shutout in three of the previous four games. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)The Edmonton Oilers host the New York Rangers on Thursday in a battle of teams looking to recapture the magic — and scoring — they had at the beginning of the season.
The Oilers (7-7-1) dropped their fifth game in six attempts with a 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Monday.
The bright spot in getting beaten by the Islanders? Edmonton scored a goal. The team had been shut out three times in the previous four games before Ethan Moreau's goal 11:02 into the second period ensured they wouldn't be goose-egged again.
But for Oilers head coach Pat Quinn, it's not the lack of offence that is his biggest complaint, but the lax defensive effort from his team.
"We sure shoot ourselves in the foot," coach Pat Quinn said. "We are a team that beats themselves right now.
"In the second period [Monday], we abandoned again any principles of defence in the defensive zone. If you check like that, you lose hockey games. That's all there is to it. They played like the Harlem Globetrotters for a couple of shifts there, and they're not even a physical team."
The one thing they have going for them is that they are in the friendly confines of Rexall Place — the Oilers have posted a 6-2-1 record at home versus a dismal 1-5-0 on the road.
Rangers haunted by lack of scoring, again
For the New York Rangers (9-6-1), the song remains the same. Haunted by a lack of scoring last year, that scarce offensive output has returned to burn them for three losses in the last four games.
The team — which had a league-worst 210 goals last year — tallied only five goals in their last four games. The only win in that span came by a razor-thin margin — a 1-0 shutout of the Boston Bruins on Sunday in which goalie Henrik Lundqvist had to shine for his team to win.
Herculean efforts from the Swedish net minder were commonplace in order for his team to win last year but things were supposed to be different during this campaign. The scoring drought of 2008-09 seemed to be a bad memory erased by the free-agent signing of Marian Gaborik in the off-season — the sniper carried a point streak through the Rangers' hot 7-1-0 start to the season. During that seven-game streak, the team potted an NHL-best 30 goals.
When Gaborik missed games against the Islanders (a 3-1 loss) and the Wild (a 3-2 loss) with an undisclosed leg injury, it seemed he took the Blueshirts' scoring with him to the press box.
Since the Slovakian sensation returned, he had the lone goal in the win against Boston but was held pointless in the 4-1 loss to the Canucks. Christopher Higgins tallied the only goal of that game, and his first as a Ranger.
"I'd rather score when we win," Higgins told the team's official website. "It seems like it's not that significant. It's the only goal we score, and we lose. Then we give up three, and most of them were preventable."
The lack of scoring is something that may have also cost former New York head coach and current Oilers associate coach Tom Renney his job last February. The game at Rexall Place will be the first time Renney faces his former team.
Both teams found out on Wednesday they would be down a player — Rangers left wing Dane Byers will serve his automatic one-game suspension for his role in a late altercation in the game against the Canucks, while Shawn Horcoff will be out of the Oilers line up for at least two weeks with a shoulder injury sustained against the Isles.
