Edmonton Oilers Defensive Core Needs to Hold the Fort

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Disjointed.

Indecisive.

Panicked.

Young.

These are all words that describe the Oilers blue line in games when both Sheldon Souray and Lubomir Visnovsky are out. Hell, when Steve Staios is on the shelf it's even worse. It was made more obvious tonight in a win over Detroit that almost never happened.

It is now apparent Souray is more than just a booming slapshot, and Visnovsky is more than a slick passer. Staios is more than just a blocked shot.

Staios may be infamous for his rim-around-the-boards play, but no one can doubt that he—along with Souray and Visnovsky—bring something to this lineup highly missed right now: decisiveness.

These guys bring their effort to every shift, in every game. Souray can revert to a nastiness in the defensive zone required when playing in such a tough division. Visnovsky breaks up scoring chances with the flick of the wrist and without ever drawing a single penalty. Staios blocks shots with a purpose.

Souray and Visnovsky are fun to watch because wherever they are on the ice, they always know their role and they can adapt to it.

Though the Oilers sprung out to a 4-0 lead against Detroit, by no means were they ever in the driver's seat of this game. Jimmy Howard was shaky and the Detroit defensive core got out to a bad start. The Oilers forwards were hounding them all night.

The play of Edmonton's defense, like Detroit's defense tonight, has been decent but at times abysmal in the past few games.

Panic has resulted from an inability to make the simple play out of the zone.

The Oilers defense has been playing outside of Quinn's new defensive zone system and have resorted back to the old ways of rimming pucks around the boards instead of looking for an outlet pass or a flick out to the neutral zone. They need to slow down the puck and think about where they are ditching the puck to.

Now a big part of this is Taylor Chorney and Theo Peckham learning on the job. But it's not the only reason, since it's no fault of theirs they are young and inexperienced, and still learning the position. Hell, Matt Greene took a long time to learn the position too—but look at him now.

You'd expect some of the older defensemen like Tom Gilbert and Denis Grebeshkov to recognize that with Souray and Visnovsky out, it's sometimes their job to play solid defense before all else.

Without a doubt, though, Gilbert and Grebeshkov truly are offensively gifted defenseman, but there comes a time to look at what the team needs, and right now, with the Oilers hard-hit by injuries and the flu, Grebeshkov and Gilbert (and Smid) are by default the go-to guys on this team.

Their turnovers and weak plays out of the zone continued into the Detroit game, which the Oilers came within a hair of gift-wrapping to a Detroit team that overcame two four-goal deficits to earn one point.

Smid and Strudwick are playing exceptionally well, and Smid's already outperforming his contract by leaps and bounds. When will Gilbert and Grebeshkov start to match the expectations of their own?

Will it happen before help arrives from the injured?

Or will it happen later rather than sooner?

The latter scenario may spell the end of one of these players' tenures in Edmonton way before the trade deadline arrives.

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