How do the Edmonton Oilers bounce back in Game 2?

The Edmonton Oilers looked to be cruising to a Game 1 victory early on in their Monday matchup against the Los Angeles Kings, as they were giving the Kings nothing to work with through the first 40 minutes. However, the Kings got their chances in the third period and the Oilers got undisciplined, and as a result, the Kings came back from 2-0 and 3-1 leads to win in overtime, including a late goal from Anze Kopitar to tie it with 16.7 seconds left.

It’s not an ideal start for a team with two of the best players in the league on it, and one that many have picked to make a deep run this year after going all the way to the Western Conference final last year. Is this a reason to be concerned about the Oilers chances in this series, or was it just a simple Game 1 loss that they’ll put behind them. Jason Gregor joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli on the All 32 segment of Daily Faceoff Live to answer that question.

Jason Gregor: The only thing they need to improve on is their discipline. They just took too many penalties. If you look at 5-on-5, every Oiler player had a positive shot share, they outscored the Kings 2-1, they outshot them by 15 shots 5-on-5, and that’s 54 minutes out of 69. The problem was that the other 15, they lost. They gave up a 4-on-4 goal, and then they give them two power-play goals, one with 16 seconds left and then one in overtime.

The L.A. Kings got a good power play. Their power play was 32% down the stretch when the Oilers was 36%, and L.A. was top five all year long, so Edmonton’s got to be more disciplined tonight. If you go back and watch that game, the Oilers figured out what they wanted to do with their passive 1-3-1 in the neutral zone, and even though 1-2-2 forecheck the Kings had, the Oilers solved that. The Kings rarely had any consistent pressure 5-on-5, so I think the Edmonton looks and just says “be smarter, be more disciplined, and we’ll be fine”.

You can watch the full episode here…