Oilers season ends in disappointing fashion with Game 6 loss

EDMONTON — A season with so much promise came to a disappointing end for the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on Sunday.

Connor McDavid had an NHL career-high 153 points (64 goals, 89 assists), Leon Draisaitl reached the 50-goal mark (52) for the third time, and the Oilers won 50 games (50-23-9) for the first time since 1986-87.

But at the end of the day, all of that means very little after Edmonton was eliminated with a 5-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 6 of the Western Conference Second Round.

It was the Oilers’ second straight loss following a 4-3 loss in Game 5 in Vegas on Friday. They hadn’t lost consecutive games since Feb. 25-27.

“It hurts. It’s tough to find words right now,” Draisaitl said. “Obviously, when you start a season, we’re in it to win it and we’re at that stage. If you don’t complete that, then it feels like a failure or a wasted year almost. It hurts.”

[RELATED: Complete Golden Knights vs. Oilers series coverage]

Looking back, the Oilers lost to a veteran, more playoff savvy team. Vegas is going to the third round of the postseason for the fourth time in its six NHL seasons, and its five goals on Sunday came from players who have been there for each of those runs: Reilly Smith, William Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault, who scored a natural hat trick in the second period.

“We just weren’t consistent enough,” Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse said. “If you give them chances, they’re going to make you pay. We played with fire a little bit, getting behind in the series, and then they found a way to finish their chances tonight and we couldn’t.”

Draisaitl was held off the score sheet for the third time in four games and was minus-4. McDavid scored a goal on the Oilers’ first shot 55 seconds into the game to tie it 1-1 but was unable to generate anything after that.

“We couldn’t create enough 5-on-5, but we scored two 5-on-5 tonight and sometimes that’s got to be enough,” Draisaitl said. “I have to take a lot of ownership myself. I wasn’t good tonight.”

Draisaitl cooled off as the series against the Golden Knights progressed, getting just one assist with a minus-7 rating in the final four games. That came after he had 17 points, including 13 goals, though Edmonton’s first eight games of the playoffs.

“It’s always tough (to score). Guys play me hard, I know that,” Draisaitl said. “But I have to find a way to be better.”

The Oilers as a whole needed to be better. They relied on their power play too much in the series, and even though it finished at an astounding 46.2 percent (18-for-39) in the playoffs, the opportunities eventually dried up. 

Edmonton only had one power-play opportunity in Game 6, failing to score a power-play goal for just the second time in 12 playoff games.

“They did a lot of good things. They shut it down, their third period was clinical,” McDavid said. “We still had our looks and didn’t find a way to get one past them. I thought in Game 5 they had a better second period than us, Game 6 they had a better second period, and we couldn’t claw our way back.”

Video: VGK@EDM, Gm6: Golden Knights advance to the WCF

Goaltending also proved to be an issue for the Oilers.

Stuart Skinner won the starting job over Jack Campbell in the regular season, earning a nomination for the Calder Trophy as the League’s top rookie in the process, but the 24-year-old could not find his game in the playoffs. He had a 3.97 goals-against average and .875 save percentage in the six games against Vegas, including getting pulled in Games 3, 5 and 6.

But Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft kept going back to Skinner, and on Sunday he allowed four goals on 17 shots before being replaced at the start of the third period by Jack Campbell, who had a 1.01 GAA and .961 save percentage in four relief appearances this postseason.

“I think we beat this up the last few days in terms of the question,” Woodcroft said. “We think about that stuff all the time, but in the end, we win as a team, and we don’t win as a team. I thought there is different points in tonight’s game where we have to be better, and that’s not on one person, regardless of the position.”

Entering the season, the Oilers believed they were a Stanley Cup contender. They finished the regular season on a 14-0-1 run and defeated the Los Angeles Kings in six games in the first round.

But anything short of a Stanley Cup is considered a disappointment in Edmonton. 

Now, they will have a long summer to think about it.