"Very open," the Edmonton captain said Friday before the Oilers defeated the New York Islanders 3-1. "Obviously something needs to change. 'Woody' is going to come in and put his touch on the group and put his touch on the team. And as players, that's what we want. We're all in this together.
"I'm not sure why … sometimes I think people forget that we're here to win. We're up here and we come in each and every day and we want to win. We haven't found the formula yet, but that's all we want to do. Whatever system [Woodcroft] puts into place, we're happy to play."
Woodcroft replaced Dave Tippett, who was fired Thursday. Edmonton (24-18-3) is fifth in the Pacific Division and was outscored 8-1 in back-to-back losses to the Vegas Golden Knights (4-0) on Tuesday and Chicago Blackhawks (4-1) on Wednesday.
"We need to change something obviously, and I'm sure Woody will come in with new ideas, with his philosophy and with his plan and we're all-in on that," forward Leon Draisaitl said. "We've got open ears and we're ready to go."
Tightening up defensively will be one of the priorities for the Oilers under Woodcroft. Edmonton was 12th in the NHL in goals against per game last season (2.75) but has dropped to 22nd this season (3.27).
"For sure we have to give up less obviously," McDavid said. "We've got to keep the puck out of our net. We haven't been putting the puck in the other team's net either. So we have to find a way to do a little bit of both."
The Oilers are 12th in goals per game this season (3.18). Since averaging 3.81 goals during their 16-5-0 start to the season, they have scored 2.61 goals per game going 8-13-3.
One of general manager Ken Holland's assessments when he made the coaching change was that Edmonton needs to improve defensively.
"You've got to keep the puck out of your net," Holland said. "We have to figure out a way. You can't win 5-4. We won lots of games [when we were 16-5-0], we were scoring five goals to win."
Draisaitl said playing those high-scoring games never has been the Oilers' intention.
"To begin with, it's not like we go into games predicting that we're going to win 5-4," he said. "That's not the mindset that we have. I think sometimes when the ball gets rolling a little bit we tend to sit back a little bit instead of really tightening up and really focus on the little things. But it's not like we go into games pretending like we're going to score five goals every game. I don't understand where that's coming from, to be honest. But obviously there's no secret that we need to be better defensively."
Draisaitl leads the NHL with 65 points (33 goals, 32 assists), and McDavid is third with 63 (23 goals, 40 assists). Draisaitl leads NHL forwards with an average ice time of 22:45 per game, followed by McDavid at 22:31.
Draisaitl played 20:25 on Friday; McDavid played 20:35.
McDavid said if a reduction in ice time would help the Oilers win more, he'd embrace it.
"Of course. I'm open to anything to win," he said.
Draisaitl said Thursday was a difficult day for everyone in the Oilers organization. Along with Tippett, associate coach Jim Playfair also was fired.
"Those days are always tough," Draisaitl said. "It's hard. Two great hockey people lost their jobs, right? Essentially we're the ones on the ice playing and we have to take responsibility for that partly. I think we've had some good years under both of them. We've taken strides. Obviously this year it's been too much of an up and down. But they've helped us a lot … so for my part I can really only say thank you to both of them."
