BLOG: Oilers get better from the teachable moments

EDMONTON, AB -In every game there are teachable moments.
The Edmonton Oilers kicked off their season with a dramatic 5-3 come from behind victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday. Despite the ups and downs, there were some obvious aspects to love from that game - the Oilers special teams were dynamic and the goaltending was superb for the majority of the night.
Yet there are always some smaller, consequential events that tend to fly under the radar.
One of those moments came at the 14:16 minute mark of the third period. With Vancouver on their seventh powerplay of the night and the score deadlocked at 3-3, Derek Ryan intercepted a Canucks pass and fought off the stick play of Tanner Pearson, before chipping the puck around Oliver Ekman-Larsson for a shot on Thatcher Demko. The high effort drive drew a Pearson high-sticking penalty just 15 seconds into the Canucks man advantage to negate a prime opportunity for the visitors to take back the lead and stopped their momentum dead in its tracks.
"DR is one of those guys that is sincerely appreciated by every teammate. Certainly, his contribution to the team is very much appreciated by the coaching staff," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said. "He's one of those unsung guys. I thought that was a big play in the game yesterday. And certainly, with the way he gets used, you can see that he's a real trusted player on the Edmonton Oilers."

"I thought that was a big play for sure. I thought that they obviously ended up on the powerplay a lot, so being able to get 4-on-4 and maybe get a little powerplay time at the end is huge," Ryan said about the play. "Especially at that time of the game, it's important to manage the swings in momentum and that was a momentum swing for us."
The Blue & Orange would hold the Canucks without a shot for the first 9:17 of that final frame, with Connor McDavid eventually scoring the game winning goal with just under five minutes remaining in the contest to get the opening night win. It was the eventual hat trick by the captain and the shorthanded tally by Nurse that got the headlines, but plays like the one made by Ryan are the ones that the coaches use when preaching process - a core tenant of Woodcroft's teaching philosophy.
"I think there are times where you're finding clips that are learning clips, the learners or so, and then there are times where you've got to make sure you're catching your team doing things properly too, and catching them doing it right," Woodcroft said. "So, you have the learning clips on the one side and the confirming clips on the other, learners and confirmers."

Learning from mistakes and confirming the correct methods of success is the work done in the dark. It's the hours in the video room trying to understand how the Oilers will achieve the level of success that is expected of them, internally and externally.
On a good week, the team may see the ice for six hours or so of practice time. It becomes critical over the course of a season to be willing to look in the mirror, and at film when trying to continuously build your game as the games progress. The focus on the little things is one way to do that.
"I think we're serious about being the best we can on a daily basis, and we're honest when we sit down for meetings," Woodcroft said.
The team will definitely take last night's win, flaws and all, but they know that games played in that manner isn't sustainable in the long run. The building blocks for success are there and continuing to do those little things will only help the Oilers cause.
"We're looking to improve, and how can we do that? I think when you go about it in that manner (in the video room), everybody's open," Woodcroft said. "As I said earlier, I think there's stuff to improve, but there were some good things last night too, and I wanted to make sure we highlighted those as well."