[DionTheDman]

Celebrate good times, come on!

The Edmonton Oilers are broken.

How else to describe a team of professional hockey players who routinely make the calibre of defensive mistakes that this one makes?

What else would you call a team of NHLers who eschew the basic defensive tenets of the sport that are taught to Canadian kids long before they are able to drive themselves to the rink? The very things they mastered so long ago that paved their path to this level of the game?

Defensive details like getting a puck deep, clearing a zone with certainty, boxing out with authority — all are foreign concepts here, on the team the standings forgot.
...
This one, perhaps, was doomed from the start.

Goalie Stuart Skinner fell down in warmup and slid tumbling into the Hurricanes' zone, as puzzled Carolina players watched. Moments later, as a helmetless Darnell Nurse unleashed a warmup wrist shot from the slot, an errant puck shot by Philip Broberg ricocheted off the crossbar and hit Nurse in the face, opening up a cut.

And the game hadn’t even started yet.

When it did, Skinner lasted just 14:48, entirely abandoned by his group of skaters.

Upstairs, general manager Ken Holland assessed. He is searching high and low for a goalie, but his team’s defensive game is the true problem.

Unless he can trade for a four-by-six sheet of plywood, that won’t fix what ails this outfit.