Playing off McJesus. A bad joke.
Coaching is part of it, as is a lack of true leadership, accountability and work ethic. In my opinion that lands on Drai and I don't see it cascading down and through the team.
We have a very average 5 on 5 and seem to get pushed off the puck more than most teams.
We need our mojo back and quick.
Draisaitl does look lazy a lot of the time, December is an awful month for him personally just like it is for the Oilers as a team. To say this lands on him though is ridiculous and exactly why we don't deserve to have him. The poor guy plays way too many minutes, here is his average ice time per game in the last 4 seasons (including this one) and where they rank in the entire NHL among forwards; 2018-19 (22:35, 2nd), 2019-20 (22:37, 1st), 2020-21 (22:11, 3rd), 2021-22 (22:52, 1st). He's 6'3 and weighs 208 lbs, thats a lot of mass to lug up and down the ice on a team who plays a rush system, not to mention he plays in all situations (5 on 5, PP, PK, 3 on 3, etc), I'll give him a pass for being too tired sometimes. Nobody seemed bothered by his play when he put up 20 goals and 20 assists in 19 games which is insanity and was really the reason we were winning so many games at the start. The man is also underpaid for what he brings (8.5 million a year is a lot don't get me wrong but he's worth around 11-12 easily). He's one of the best players in the world living in McDavid's shadow, he's already under appreciated around the league, for Oiler fans to be putting blame on him is awful. Even if that wasn't your intention with that comment it's still worth mentioning because I've seen blame being thrown at him and McDavid and I feel bad for the both of them. They deserve a lot better than this joke of a management group we have, Leon's in the 8th year of his career and Connor in his 7th, they've officially made the playoffs twice and the furthest they've been is round 2, thats shameful, an embarrassment really.
He also just scored his league leading 26th goal while I was typing this so there ya go.
Now for the factors you mentioned. "True leadership" is hard to have when you're a young player and you've never had a solid coaching staff, besides the leadership on the team seems fine, we've seen McDavid be an active leader in game, we have that good ol' veteran presence in Duncan Keith and Mike Smith, probably their only real value at this point, Nurse and Hyman are also well known to be good leaders, and while Nuge and Drai are quiet they seem to be popular in the locker room. It's hard to be accountable when your coach throws you under the bus, like Dave Tippett did to Mikko Koskinen. Drai had an awful December in 2019-20 too and you know what he did, he said to the cameras "I know I've been sh*t lately". How is the bottom 6 even supposed to be accountable when they have close to no responsibility or ice time under Dave Tippett. Ryan McLeod has been on fire lately, he had his first career multi-point game against New Jersey and overall played well, you know how much ice time he got in that game which went into OT... 8 minutes... and we lost. As far as work ethic goes I agree they haven't been playing hard hockey, but some games they also work really really hard, let me think which 2-3 games they did that... oh yes the ones where Dave Tippett was out due to covid protocol. If work ethic is a problem with an individual, then that individual has a poor work ethic, if it's an issue with an entire team... then it's a coaching problem.
Dave Tippett was a mediocre coach who had a system I did not like, but at the very least he was confident in himself and in his team, and the Oilers were winning games, not playoff games, but they were winning games.
Now Dave Tippett is a coach who has lost 10 games in a row, he is desperate and it's showing, he's lost his confidence and he's not even mediocre anymore he's just straight up bad. He lost control of his locker room, this team needs a coaching change now, as much as we hate the vicious coaching cycle the Oilers have gone through, I think it's really warranted this time.
With that being said I'll never be a fan who cheers for a loss for "the greater good", I do hope Dave Tippett and the boys get the win tonight with an injury and covid riddled team.