After the first two games in Edmonton, a lot of the talk in the Oilers room was centred around staying out of the penalty box because sooner or later the Sharks power play was going to catch fire.
In Game 3, the Oilers did just that and pulled out a 1-0 win to regain home-ice advantage but in Game 4, San Jose had eight power plays and sure enough they caught fire and scored four times with the man advantage in a 7-0 win.
"It's going to be tough to win games if you're spending 19 minutes in the box so we have to start there," Adam Larsson said.
Part of the issue with the club has been finding a way to play an emotional game without getting penalized. Mark Letestu touched on that topic.
"The emotion was there. But sometimes it was a little misdirected," Letestu began. "The constant parade to the penalty box hasn't helped. We just needed to play at some point, turn the momentum and we shot ourselves in the foot at times. It snowballed and went the other way. But it's a lesson. We're still a young group learning. We learned one the tough way last night."
He added that the feeling had always been that the Sharks were going to find their power play if given enough chances and that's exactly what happened on Tuesdaynight.
"They had a push. There was obvious desperation in their game. We put them on the power play way too often. A group like that that's been to the Stanley Cup Final, their belief system is pretty strong. You put their big boys on the power play enough, they're going to find a way. We have to start limiting those opportunities."
BLOG: Staying disciplined
Oilers talk about the need to stay out of the box, particularly now that the Sharks power play has ignited
