"We don't play hard enough," the Panthers coach said. What will it take to play harder moving forward? "When you play hard enough, you do things right," he said.
"You're supporting the puck, you advance it, you keep it. You make them play in their own end. You go to the hard areas. It's a simple game. Everything's in order when you're on loose pucks and competing on every shift."
Still currently sitting only two points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for second place in the Atlantic Division (the Maple Leafs visit the Ottawa Senators tonight), the Panthers have struggled to regain the offensive firepower that fueled their six-game winning streak heading into the All-Star break.
After scoring 30 goals in six games before the break, they've posted 18 in nine games since.
"We kind of got away from that," Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said of the team's recent and surprising goal drought. "I think before the All-Star break we had fun. We played for each other. We battled for each other. We worked hard. Right now, it feels like we're not first on the pucks. We don't get their first. All those little things, we need to get better at."
Adam Larsson netted the only goal of the first period for either club when he took a pass from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and threaded a long slap shot from just below the blue line straight through a heap of traffic and past goaltender Sam Montembeault's glove to put the Oilers up 1-0 at 15:14.
Following a scoreless middle frame, Leon Draisaitl jumped on a rebound after a shot from Kailer Yamamoto and scored to increase Edmonton's lead to 2-0 just 13 seconds into the third period.
"It's just not good enough," Quenneville said. "At the start of the game we didn't dictate the tempo or the pace. We didn't have the puck at all. We had the puck, and then we'd give it away or lose it. We didn't protect it. We didn't support it. They won a lot of those battles."
At 8:45 Jonathan Huberdeau trimmed Florida's deficit down to 2-1 when he picked a corner and wired a shot over Mikko Koskinen's right shoulder to make it a manageable one-goal game. But with 1:58 left in regulation, Darnell Nurse cashed in on an empty net to put the Oilers ahead 3-1.
Then, with 46 seconds left on the clock, Yamamoto added another empty-netter to make it 4-1.
Montembeault finished with 25 saves on 27 shots, while Koskinen stopped 33 of 34.
"Tonight, Monty (Montembeault) keeps us in the game," Huberdeau said. "The whole game, we can't get going, can't get a goal. Then, at the start of the third, we get scored on. We've just got to change our mentality and play way better than that."
Here are five takeaways from Saturday's loss in Sunrise…
