The offense arrived eventually for the Oilers, but it took too long to get there, and they also had no answers for what they gave up on the other end. Goalie Mike Smith was pulled after allowing three goals on 10 shots in the first 6:05. They trailed 3-1 after the first period and were losing 5-1 when Blake Coleman scored his second goal at 6:10 of the second.
When forward Kailer Yamamoto scored the Oilers' fourth unanswered goal to tie the game 6-6 at 1:28 of the third period, it looked like they had the momentum and were going to pull off the comeback.
"You're not going to get away with a lot of these games," Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson said. "Sure, we scored nine, but we can't give up four-goal leads. We can't let 'Marky' out to dry and all that stuff. We'll learn from it and we'll move on."
Three Flames goals later, the Oilers' comeback hopes were doused.
"Just a couple of mistakes, collectively, individually, that ended up right on their tape and back of our net," Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl said. "A lot of things we obviously need to clean up."
Defenseman Darnell Nurse was succinct on what the Oilers had to do better defensively.
"Can't give up nine," he said.
The Oilers can't let power-play opportunities go by either. They were 0-for-4 with three shots in Game 1 after going 7-for-19 (36.8 percent) on the man-advantage in seven games in the first round against the Los Angeles Kings. During the regular season the Oilers were third in the NHL at 26.0 percent.
"We didn't really get any momentum going on our PP," said Draisaitl, who had a goal and two assists. "That's another thing we're obviously looking to improve and be better next game."
The Oilers are going to look at what they need to clean up out of this one and move on quickly, because it's not something they want to repeat.
"The one thing that we talked about was not having any independent contractors, so when the game got to 4-1, 5-2, I thought our team did work to make a game of it," Woodcroft said. "But in the end, as I said, we scored six times. There's no way we should not win that hockey game."