BLOG: 5-on-5 play a focus during Monday meeting

EDMONTON, AB - The first half of the opening period from Sunday's 7-4 defeat to the Carolina Hurricanes took up much of the time available at a Monday morning team meeting for the Oilers players and coaching staff.
Three goals from the visitors inside the opening 11:02 of the game at even strength provided plenty of talking points.
"We looked at the first 10 minutes of that game yesterday and it just wasn't even close," Oilers centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. "Zero shots, they get three goals, and it just wasn't good enough. We're working hard and trying to play the right way, but we're losing too many battles and we're being too soft on pucks."

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BLOG: 5-on-5 play a focus
Head Coach Ken Hitchcock kept the focus of the meeting on the team's play at 5-on-5, where the Oilers have a -16 differential this season.
"We're not playing good enough 5-on-5. When we do, we're very effective," Hitchcock said. "You look at the way we played last 30 minutes against Buffalo 5-on-5, you look at the way we played in Vancouver 5-on-5, and it's exactly what the formula is. As soon as we get away from that we feed the other team's strengths. We had things going well in Calgary and then fed their transition game, and they're quick. [Carolina] last night was very quick, they put a lot of pucks on net, and we fed their transition game.
"So today our whole focus was looking at ourselves 5-on-5 - what's good, what's not good, and what needs to be cleaned up."
The Oilers have put an emphasis on being a hard-working, checking team since Hitchcock's arrival, and have had success in recent games before taking a step back in regards to tactics.
Moulding and fine-tuning their game remains a team effort.
"It's not like a switch is just going to flick and we're going to be a good hockey team. It's going to take a collective work ethic and guys buying in," captain Connor McDavid said. "It's a lot of hard work. It's not easy to win hockey games and I think we've forgotten that.
"We're a team that's not going to out-skill anyone. We're not going to win games 6-5, we're a team that needs to find ways to win 2-1 and 3-2. We can get to two or three every night, but we need to find ways to keep pucks out of our net."