BLOG: Oilers try and find more offence

Not counting the shootout tallies on January 4, the Oilers have only four goals in their last six games. The search for offence was prevalent particularly on Tuesday in Nashville as the club played very well defensively but still ended up losing the game, 2-1.
"Even the best defensive teams give up one or two," said Oilers centre Mark Letestu. "You still have to score goals. I think it's unreasonable to ask (every night) to win 1-0 or 2-1. Every now and then it'll happen."
Head Coach Todd McLellan was asked what the team is doing in order to try and generate more offensive opportunities.
"I think you've got to create volume chances," he began. "The shooting percentage has to go up on those volume chances. And when you do get - and we have had - a lot of really good looks, sometimes we had empty nets and instead of bearing down and trying to put it through the back of the net, relax a little bit and put it into the net."
McLnellan added that the team needs to get players in front of the net more often and when doing that, needs to shoot it on goal to generate those chances.
"We also have to get a little hungrier and dirtier in areas. I often use football analogies. If the receiver is running to the end zone and the quarterback never throws it there, why would you keep doing it? And vice versa, if the quarterback is throwing it in the end zone and the receivers aren't there, why would you keep doing it?
"The shooter and attacking group have to be on the same page and we have to get better at it."
Milan Lucic agreed with the coach on his methods of trying to generate offence.
"Just simplify things, I've always found," he said. "Go to the net and try to look for a rebound, maybe get that bounce off a shin pad. Slinging pucks from the corners and all that type of stuff. We've got to do our best to create them and we've got to do our best to finish them.
"For myself, when I'm in a scoring slump I'll go back to watch goals that I've scored in the past just to remind myself how I scored them. Those are ways that mentally you can get yourself going again."
In practice on Thursday, the team worked on all those things discussed by McLellan, Lucic and Letestu.
"In practice today, we moved some people around and got guys in different spots," McLellan remarked. "Some of the drills started with that exact mentality of getting it to the pad area then finding a retrieval and scoring off the rebound. We're approaching it that way, we're preaching it that way. Hopefully we respond that way."