The Edmonton Oilers have spent their first two games against the lowly Vancouver Canucks leaking goals everywhere, and the easy target has been obvious: the goaltenders. But Mike Babcock isn’t handing out that kind of blame.
After Edmonton allowed 13 goals in those two games, Babcock made it clear that he sees the problem as his own responsibility. Asked by the Journal’s Jim Matheson how much of the damage belonged to the goalies and how much to the players in front of them, Babcock answered: “I think it’s coaching,” then repeated it for emphasis. “I think it’s coaching.”
He had already gone down that road after Edmonton’s opening-night 6-5 loss to Vancouver, when frustration was already building around Tristan Jarry. That only got louder after Thursday night’s 9-7 win over Vancouver, when Devon Levi became the next goalie to take the heat.
It was not an OK start to the year for Edmonton’s goalies.
In fact, it was far from fracking OK.
The numbers are ugly enough to fuel the outrage. Between Jarry and Levi, the Oilers have faced only 21 Grade A shots and allowed 13 goals.
The article notes that an average NHL goalie is expected to stop at least 80 per cent of Grade A shots on average. Jarry gave up six goals on nine Grade A shots, while Levi allowed seven on 12.
Still, Babcock has pushed the conversation somewhere else: to the structure in front of them. After the first game, Sportsnet’s Mark Spector asked him how Edmonton could deliver the kind of game it wanted despite missing more players. Babcock went straight to the details.
“Well, I think the biggest thing is our F3 and our D (defenceman) pinching last game. We gave up eight odd-man rushes.
You can’t. You give up no odd man rushes.
And if they get a break and they get one, that’s a different thing. But to do what we did last game, you give your goaltending no chance.
It makes no sense. So we got to be organized coming out of the offensive zone.
That’s where they got most of their chances.”
That explanation doesn’t excuse everything that has gone wrong in net. The article says Jarry still let in a few weak ones and needed to make more big saves. But Babcock’s read on the bigger picture was dead on: Edmonton’s defencemen made poor pinching decisions, and the F3 - the forward responsible for covering high in the offensive zone - didn’t clean up the mess.
What stands out most is how openly Babcock has owned the issue. He didn’t stop at diagnosing the breakdowns. He also pointed the finger at himself and his staff for not teaching the system well enough.
“We’ve been through it,” he said, “But I’m a big believer in this: is that you teach it, and if they don’t got it, the responsibility lies on you. So we obviously didn’t do a good enough job of teaching it, we hadn’t seen it early in the exhibition (season), and suddenly it started and we saw it. Got to fix it.”
That kind of directness is rare enough to stand out. It also fits the larger point Babcock is making: the coach is responsible for getting the message through, and the team’s repeated breakdowns on breakouts, odd-man rushes, and defensive reads are on him to correct.
For Oilers fans, that honesty has a certain appeal. Edmonton has lived with inconsistent, up-and-down, often ineffective defensive play for a decade, and the article argues it likely cost the team a Stanley Cup or two.
The offense has always been the loud part of the story. The defense has too often been the part that drags everything down.
That’s the backdrop for Babcock’s message now: if the Oilers are going to stop turning games into track meets, the fix has to start with coaching, teaching, and execution - not just the goalie in the crease.
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