SUNRISE, FL -The Oilers enter the last game of their road trip the same way they began the trip, looking to find the consistency in their game.
There have been a lot of ups-and-downs in the early part of the season for the club and those issues were only further exacerbated by the recent loss of Evander Kane for the next three-to-four months.
Ahead of Saturday evenings game against last year's Presidents Trophy winners, the Oilers focus turned to translating their work in practice to the games that matter.
"I thought it was a good day. We had a good meeting and went out and did a little bit of work on the ice. In the end, it's about it showing up come game time though. Right now, we talked about it, we use the word sporadic when we want to be automatic," Woodcroft said.
The issues that continue to pop up, like turning the puck over too often, or not taking advantage of opportunities to clear their own zone have hampered the Oilers from reaching their potential. The Oilers have 174 giveaways in their first 15 games and their 11.6 giveaways-per game ranks third last in the NHL.
However it is still early, and there have been some cylinders firing, but with a difficult matchup against the Panthers looming the Oilers know they have to clean things up sooner rather than later.
"Right now we're seeing good things at different times. I thought the first period was a pretty good first period for us. I thought were competitive," Woodcroft said. "We did some things that were self-inflicted that I think we can clean up, but there's some automatics that we want to see, and right now it's not happening enough. As a result, your record or your results are kind of uneven and in order to get the results that we want, we got to make sure that our automatics are taken care."
