It doesn’t matter who is behind the bench, who tends the crease, or what the lines look like. The more things change for the Edmonton Oilers, the more they stay the same.

Such was the case in the team’s season opener, which began with a bang, continued with the screech reminiscent of a car crash, and ended with a thud: a 6-5 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks.

While a team made up of Oilers farmhands had little issue beating a roster not far off what we saw last night in the pre-season, the Oilers NHLers couldn’t share the same fate. Evan Bouchard’s record-setting night aside, it was nothing short of a disaster for the Oilers.

Tristan Jarry couldn’t make a save. The power play barely clicked, and no matter how hard new head coach Mike Babcock tried to even out the minutes, nothing worked.

The Oilers have a lot of work to do.

“I don’t think I thought for one second it was going to be easy,” he said. “But tonight was an indication that we have serious work to do.”

He wasn’t ready to make excuses for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ sudden injury that kept him out of the lineup, saying they weren’t missing any key guys, and wouldn’t lay the loss at Jarry’s feet, either. Those on the ice needed to be better, he felt, calling the Oilers’ performance “ridiculous.”

Not one to sugarcoat things, there’s an argument that could be made that his comments could even be underselling the work that needs to be done.

Babcock wasn’t an indecisive Jake Walman on the second goal against, unsure whether to commit to stopping the Canucks at the opposing blue line or skate backwards, and instead got caught in limbo while his defensive partner, Connor Murphy, was already up ice before Marco Rossi scored.

Babcock wasn’t an equally indecisive Ryan Shea on the Canucks’ third goal, then unable to get back in time to close the gap before Jonathan Lekkerimäki beat Jarry clean, nor was he the Ryan Shea who got outworked on Paul Cotter’s overtime goal.

Babcock wasn’t Shakir Mukhamadullin, Vasily Podkolzin, two-goal night aside, and Bouchard puck-watching in the third, allowing Max Sasson to get a partial breakaway to make it 4-2.

Ultimately, he wasn’t Jarry, who allowed a goal against on Vancouver’s third and whose only notable save came on a Zeev Buium overtime chance.

But don’t worry. After speaking highly of the work he did this summer with goaltending coach Peter Aubry, saying he had “a good summer,” the veteran of eight seasons and 327 NHL games twice called the game a learning experience.

“It’s the first game of the season. It’s always, always tough,” he said after the game. “It was a short pre-season, so I think just learning from every game, whether it’s the ups, the downs, and just being better every single game.”

“Like I said,” he later added when asked if last night’s game jars the off-season work, “it’s the first game, but you have to learn, you have to grow from every experience, and I think that’s, that’s something that we’ll do today.”

Silver lining? It’s Game 1 of 84. Lots of runway left. But as we saw as recently as last season, that runway gets short quickly.

Zach Laing is the managing editor at Daily Faceoff Edmonton and news director at The Nation Network. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.

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