EDMONTON – The margin for error is so small for the Edmonton Oilers right now that it only takes a few mistakes to lead to their demise.

The Oilers lost 4-2 to division rival Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday after taking a one-goal lead entering the third period. Ignore the last of three late scores, scored by Vegas captain Mark Stone into an empty net with five seconds on the clock. There was a lot of blame in the previous two.

However, the Oilers were in that position because they just can’t score enough.

They could have increased their lead if Connor McDavid – returning from a three-game injury layoff – or Jeff Skinner scored on their chances in the second period, or if Viktor Arvidsson wasn’t robbed by Vegas goalie Adin Hill early in the third period. .

Not to mention the only two goals they conceded were strange ones. Defenseman Brett Kulak tipped in a point shot from partner Darnell Nurse, and Zach Hyman had a loose puck on the side of the net due to an odd ricochet off the boards.

Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch called their offensive effort just “average.” That’s not good enough for a team that has now scored 2.36 goals per game – 30th in the NHL.

They don’t create enough and if they do, they don’t finish enough. They have a team shooting percentage of 7.13 percent, better than only the New York Islanders. They also don’t put their opponents in chase mode enough. The Oilers had just one penalty for the third time in their last four games.

The Oilers welcomed Connor McDavid back to the lineup, but that wasn’t enough for a win. (Leila Devlin/Getty Images)

“Whether it’s the fact that it’s early in the year, it’s about not letting up when we get those opportunities – and making sure they’re good shots and good rebounds and things like that,” defenseman Mattias Ekholm said. “Another part of it is we have to put ourselves in positions to score. We’ll have to work a little harder to get even more penalties.

“It’s hard to score five-on-five in this league, it really is, so we’ve got some work to do. I know we have the pieces here, and I know we will get it together.

Maybe, but it’s a problem until they do.

The lack of offense put the Oilers in a position to blow this game, their second in a row. And they screw it up because of these three facets:

The fine

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins doesn’t take many penalties. His highest number of penalty minutes in a season in his career is 36. He only picked up his second minor of the 2024/25 season on Wednesday.

But boy, was it ill-timed and unnecessary?

Nugent-Hopkins followed puck-carrying Golden Knights defenseman Shea Theodore as they came around the Vegas net. He then reached out and grabbed his opponent right in front of the referee with 8:32 gone in the third period.

“I feel like I’m just trying to make a play with it,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “From his (referee’s) perspective, it’s a penalty and he calls it. Difficult time to accept it.”

The Oilers were lousy on the penalty kill, stopping opponents from entering Wednesday’s game just 60 percent of the time. They killed Troy Stecher’s hooking attack in the second period.

There’s a hockey axiom that suggests bad penalties are harder to kill. The Oilers couldn’t go 2-for-2 after Nugent-Hopkins’ foul.

“That’s a shame with the penalty – 60 meters away (from the Edmonton net),” Knoblauch said. “It’s hard to take an offensive zone penalty when we were in the lead.”

“As a (penalty) killer, especially as it’s gone so far for us, it’s not fun to be in that penalty area at that moment,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We worked so hard the rest of the game. Obviously (I) would like to have that back.

The equalizer

There have been a lot of problems with penalty kills this season. In this case, the moments before Noah Hanifin’s equalizer – a shot from the point – might have been better defended.

“They were able to make a seam pass – it was a very high level pass – we covered it pretty well, but it went through us,” Knoblauch said. “If that pass comes through, you’re in scramble mode.

“There were a lot of good things on the penalty kill – some cleared, some denied – but just not good enough.”

But actually the goal did not come from the skaters on the ice.

Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner had a solid game. The windmill save he made on Alexander Holtz with a minute left in the second period was divine. However, Hanifin’s power play goal just misses the mark.

The shot just came off the ice. There was some traffic, especially through Tomas Hertl. But the attempt failed and Skinner seemed to be watching it closely for most of the time.

“I thought we did a good job on it,” Ekholm said of the PK. “I thought we were sacrificing bodies there, trying to get into lanes … and it looked like a little bit of a pulse on the ice and it found the back of the net.”

Bingo. Ekholm was in no way trying to throw his netminder under the bus with the last part of that quote. By simply outlining what happened, the story is told.

Skinner’s .758 save percentage while short-handed ranks 12th in the league, according to Natural Stat Trick. He also conceded 3.13 more goals than expected in this situation. Only three goalkeepers were worse. Skinner’s partner, Calvin Pickard, is in last place at 4.64.

The winning goal

Nugent-Hopkins’ penalty was ill-advised, but it was a temporary error of judgement. Skinner let a puck go past him, which he would rather not have done.

But it was Hanifin’s second goal with 48.4 seconds left that made the Oilers fool themselves. And that’s mainly because several players didn’t do enough.

Holtz dumped the puck in the Oilers zone and skated away during a line change. The puck circled around the boards to the hashmarks, where Ekholm lost a battle with Ivan Barbashev. Not ideal, but there were three other Oilers in the picture: Evan Bouchard, Leon Draisaitl and Vasily Podkolzin.

The problem was that none of them included Hanifin, who drove through the middle when Barbashev hit him with a pass. He beat Skinner against the grain with the glove side.

“There should be support in the corner,” Knoblauch said. “There wasn’t the support that there should have been. It looks bad for Ekky, but it’s not Ekky. Ekky should have help there. They are able to make that cross-ice pass, which makes it very difficult for a goalie to make that save going through the slot from east to west.

Ekholm summed up the biggest misstep perfectly.

“We can’t run someone down when we’re four-on-two in the D-zone. Plain and simple,” he said.

No. No, that’s not possible.

The two goals conceded ruined a good performance. It also turned two points into one and then zero, dropping the Oilers to 6-7-1 on the season.

“We’re winning battles and doing the right things,” Kulak said. “Every chance they got, they put the puck in the back of the net, and that was the difference in the end.”

(Top photo: Perry Nelson / Imagn Images)