Three takeaways from Oilers' embarrassing season opener vs. Jets

The Edmonton Oilers are the Stanley Cup favorite in seemingly everyone’s mind, but you wouldn’t know it from watching their season opener on Wednesday night. 

After a relatively solid start to the game in which they were outshooting the Winnipeg Jets 9-4, things quickly went south and saw them fall 6-0. In a way, one could argue the Oilers were suffering from jet lag in more ways than one.

It’s far too soon to panic in Edmonton, but with that said, this team will need to dig deep and come up with some much better efforts moving forward. Starting the way it did last season cannot happen again, and everyone in that room is well aware of it. With that said, here are the three main takeaways from Wednesday night's disappointing outing.

Struggles from Oilers’ Preseason Continue

It generally isn’t fair to judge a team based on preseason play, but anyone who watched the Oilers during their eight exhibition outings would tell you they weren’t nearly good enough. 

That continued to be the case right until the end, as they lost their final two games to the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks while being outscored by a combined 10-3.

Their lack of attention to detail was evident all evening long. Despite not giving up many shots, they gave up a ton of high-quality scoring chances due to some uncharacteristic plays. This can be chalked up to rustiness, given that it’s their first game playing with this exact group, but fans won’t let it fly for much longer.

Jets Had Skinner’s Number Early

Early into this one, it looked as though it was going to be a great start for Stuart Skinner, who made a few big saves, including a breakaway stop on Mark Scheifele. Things changed from there, however, as he allowed two goals less than four minutes apart right before the end of the first, and it didn’t get any better from there. He allowed three more before the midway point of the second period, which spelled the end of his night.