After losing to the Vancouver Canucks in overtime, the Edmonton Oilers now post a ten game record of 4-4-2, good for 10 points, or fifth in the Pacific division.

Yesterday night, Edmonton was victimized by former Oiler Jordan Eberle for two goals. Tonight, Edmonton was shown up by Kiefer Sherwood for two goals.

Last week the Oilers were made to fools by Jack Hughes on the Devils, and again by Dylan Larkin on the Red Wings. The week before that Bo Horvat single handedly beat the squad.

Is the hangover of a second Stanley Cup finals failure to blame? The Edmonton Oilers look disengaged, bored, listless. Miscommunication is rampant. Turnovers, breakaways, and bad pinches have cost the Oilers several games now.

Should Edmonton be 10-0-0 right now? No, that’s not a reasonable expectation. But they should be playing better. The Canadiens have 7 wins under their belt. The Utah Mammoth have 8 wins. The Devils have won 8 games in a row. The difference is those teams are playing with fire under their feet, Edmonton is just trying to stay afloat.

Against the Kraken, in the first two minutes, Edmonton gave up a 2-on-1 for an Eberle wristshot that beat Skinner with no contest. Seattle extended their lead on another rush chance; Skinner over committed to blocking out a shot from the right side but a passing lane was open – Skinner made a lunging save attempt, but it was too late – Tye Kartye had a wide open net to make the game 2-0 Kraken.

Evan Bouchard was able to score a goal with raw speed, no screen needed. But as Bouchard giveth, he also taketh. After a horrible pinch in the third period Jordan Eberle was given a mile of room to work with to make the game 3-1. Ekholm would score another blue line clapper after the fact, but Edmonton couldn’t find the third goal.

And Vancouver wasn’t any better. Brock Boeser was able to escape Matt Savoie and beat Calvin Pickard for the first goal of Sunday evening. Petterson extended their lead on the powerplay after Pickard pushed off his post – there wasn’t enough time to get back down into butterfly and Petterson’s shot went right between the legs.

Leon Draisaitl responded with a big goal to cut the lead back to one, but it was met by Kiefer Sherwood dogwalking Ekholm in the final minute of the second period to make the score 3-1 Vancouver.

Jack Roslovic scored his first goal as an Oiler at the start of the third period to give Edmonton some hope and Draisaitl scored again on the powerplay to force overtime – ultimately Sherwood put the Oilers comeback to bed on a textbook perfect tip deflection; Pickard never had a chance.

What’s funny about this year’s bad start is that it’s actually an improvement over the last two years. They were 4-5-1 last year, and 2-7-1 the year before that.

Much ado was made in the offseason about the need to have a strong start, but we really haven’t seen that desire so far. Maybe it’s the hangover, maybe Edmonton is just not a team that wins games in October.

It’s not all bad though. Edmonton is getting scoring from practically all of their depth players. Last year’s pickups of Arvidsson and Skinner were battling through themselves for goals. Mangiapane already has three. Roslovic, Philp, Howard and Lazar have all scored. Zach Hyman will be slotting back into the lineup once his wrist is fully healed. This team is deep.

And it should also be noted that Edmonton hasn’t had a blow out loss yet. The Devils 5-3 loss was fairly out of reach, but Edmonton has largely been in the contest down to the final seconds in every loss this season.

Things could be scarier. Edmonton will pick things up, as they do. But for now, we still have a couple more spooky games of October Oilers hockey.

Edmonton hosts the Utah Mammoth at home on Tuesday night.