Oilers horrendous penalty kill 'just sucks the life out of us,' coach says

The sight of Patrick Maroon trading punches behind the Los Angeles net got Oilers fans up on their feet Tuesday, and gave them their first real chance to cheer all night.

Fans most likelydidn't realize at the time they were applauding the iceberg that had just slammed into their ship.

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The fight, and the head-shot hit that triggered it, came with the Oilers down 1-0 late in the second period, and earned Maroon a fighting major and a match penalty that ended his night.

The outcome sentenced the league's worst penalty-kill unit to five minutes on the ice with no chance for early parole. The Kings scored three goals in 2:58 and thereafter cruised to a 5-0 win.

Two games, total score: 10-0

To recap: the Oilers lost games Sunday and Tuesday to Winnipeg and Los Angeles by a combined score of 10-0. No wonder the fans got excited about the fisticuffs.

Maroon took full responsibility for the dangerous hit on Kings defenceman Drew Doughty.

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"I'm not a dirty player," he said. "I never was a dirty player. I have so much respect for players in this league, and him. I play the game hard.

"I'm just mad that they gave me a match and it hurt our [penalty kill]. Unfortunately, it's a bad bounce. They scored four goals and I'll take the honour for that."

Reunited with Connor McDavid halfway through Sunday's miserable loss to Winnipeg,Maroon maintained his spot on the top line Tuesday against the Kings. He looked good there, and made several brisk passes in the offensive zone, proving once again he has better hands than he is often given credit for.

Unfortunately, all that good work was flushed away by a careless hit that earned his team a fourth-straight loss. The Oilers are now 17-20-3 and wondering what happened to the momentum and confidence they worked so hard to build during a four-game winning streak in the run-up to Christmas.

The Oilers penalty kill on home ice now hovers at around 55 per cent, a historic level of futility that has dragged down other aspects of the team game.

'I don't have the answer'

"It just sucks the life out of us," coach Todd McLellan said of his team's horrible PK. "That's what happened tonight. We were OK for two periods. But the major penalty sucked the life out of us."

For the umpteenth time, McLellan was asked what he can do to fix the problem.

"I don't have the answer," he said, "or we'd have changed it a month ago."

The follow-up question came.

"Does the lack of a penalty kill bleed over into the rest of the game?"

"Yup," McLellan said, almost before the questionwas finished.

"You don't play near as aggressive," he said. "So the penalty kill has to at least show up and instill a little confidence in the team. And it's not doing that."

Unlike Sunday's game against the Jets, the Oilers were in this one for the first two periods. The teams traded chances in the first period. Oilers goalie Cam Talbot and Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick traded saves.

What ifJesse had scored?

The Kings opened the score late in the second period when Oilers defenceman Kris Russell made an ill-advised pinch in the offensive zone and got caught between the devil and the deep-blue sea. That left his partner Andrej Sekera to fend for himself on the resulting two-on-one. Andy Andreoff took a crossing pass and put the puck behind Talbot to make it 1-0.

Then came the what-if moment. With seconds left in the period, Oilers rookie Jesse Puljujarvi found himself with a wide-open net and rang the puck off the crossbar.

A goal there would have erased the Kings lead.

More importantly, a goal would have erased the Maroon hit on Doughty.

On such small things do hockey games hang.

Instead of going into the third tied 1-1, the Oilers went into the third down 1-0 and facing five minutes of hell on ice.

Oilers captain Connor McDavid went without a point for the third straight game, the first time that has happened in his short and illustrious career. It wasn't for lack of trying.

As usual, McDavid was all over the ice. He created numerous scoring chances and titled the ice every time he jumped over the boards.

Oilers veteran Mark Letestu said after the game, the negatives start to pile up and start to weigh on players' minds.

"Sometimes the harder you try, the worse things go."

Teams mired in slumps are sometimes guilty of looking at the "big picture," he said, such as the standings or the bad stats. The only way to dig out is to concentrate on the moment, to just play the game.

The Oilers get the chance to try again Thursday at home against the Anaheim Ducks.