After delivering Chicago a well earned beatdown, the Oilers have seemed to take a step back.

In Nashville the Oilers failed to get any sort of forward momentum, and the clubs spent most of the match trading goals back and forth. Nashville had the luxury of playing with the lead more often than not, and the Oilers never found a way to take control of the game. While they got a point out of overtime, the match ended in a disaster when Tristan Jarry came 25 feet out of the net to play the puck, making a save, but leaving the net wide open for Steven Stamkos in the process.

The issue with the play is that Jarry never should have played the puck, because he shouldn’t have had to play the puck. The usual suspects, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard were on the ice for a greatly extended shift – and they almost managed to wear out the Nashville defenders – but instead of going for a line change after the Predators cleared the zone, Connor McDavid went back into the zone (over a minute into his shift) and lost possession in the scramble. The puck went sailing for a breakaway and Bouchard didn’t have enough gas to catch up, the rest is history; Jarry made a play to save the game, but the rest of the group was already down and out.

Game 48 against the New York Islanders was an incredibly tight 1-0 shutout in favour of the Islanders. The Oilers played better, and they even beat Sorokin twice, but the puck opted to go post-to-post instead of post-to-net, and those don’t count for goals. Edmonton got some bad puck luck, which happens. You have to pick yourself and move on when you lose a game with only one goal scored total.

The bigger concern out of the last two losses is coach Kris Knoblauch’s utilization of his talent pool. Knoblauch played Connor McDavid for 26:25 on Tuesday, and another 25:33 minutes on Thursday. Leon Draisaitl was played for 23:59 and 24:40 minutes respectively. Why even dressing Trent Frederic if you’re only going to play him for six minutes a game? The head coach is falling into the trap that every other Oilers coach has fallen into, which is play the magic duo because they’ll more often than not will you a win and two points out of thin air.

It works, which is a problem, because it is incredibly short sighted.

Third and fourth liners are not getting minutes or responsibilities, or even time to build identities. The top lines are getting their bones ground into dust. The Oilers don’t look better for it either, in fact they look worse because players are either exhausted or their feet are cold.

Coaching needs to wake up, because they’re getting good goaltending now and it’s being squandered by poor forward management.

The Oilers will play their next game on the road against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night before jumping into an extended homestand where they can take another stab at getting the fabled three game winstreak.