The Edmonton Oilers didn’t seem to learn much from their spanking in Buffalo, falling 7-4 to the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night.

The positives?

No NHL team has scored more than 2 goals on Logan Thompson this season. Edmonton scored four times. Darnell Nurse found himself two goals early in the game. The top pairing of Bouchard-Nurse ended the night at a neutral goal differential. The final score ended 7-4, but the final two goals came from empty netters in garbage time – the game was much closer than it looked on paper.

The negatives?

Just about everything else. The team continues to play a pouting, deflated game. The players look incredulent that the other team has the gall to score goals while they skate around listlessly.

The Capitals opened the game 2-0 with early goals from Protas and Ovechkin. Nurse found Edmonton some momentum but Washington sucked it away with a goal from Ryan Leonard. Not much progress happened in the second period and Edmonton spent the third period trying, and failing, to dig themselves out of a three-goal sized hole.

Stuart Skinner let in 5 shots on 19 shots, not one of his better nights.

After a game like this you’ll often see pundits mourn that McDavid’s career is wasting away, but the thing is, Connor McDavid was -2 tonight. He had two assists. After some advanced calculus you can work out that McDavid was on the ice for four of the seven goals scored against Edmonton.

No one on the team is playing up to their contract.

Darnell Nurse said it best in the post-game press conference, “It’s tough to win games when you’re giving up five.”

Burn the tape and move on. Edmonton plays another game in Tampa Bay tomorrow night and will finish their seven game road trip against their current arch-nemesis, the Florida Panthers, Saturday night.