It’s too early for Mike Babcock to say who will play on which line. But the high tempo at Edmonton Oilers practice Monday as the National Hockey League club continued training camp? That’s here to stay, the new head coach said. “I like the puck to be on tape. I like us to go fast. I like us to listen, understand what we’re doing, and then I like us to compete,” Babcock said. The coach added he didn’t think the session “was very pretty” as players tried to impress the coaching staff and prepare for their second preseason game Tuesday night in Winnipeg. That criticism is welcome, superstar captain Connor McDavid said. “That’s right in line with my beliefs, too, (that) practice is extremely important,” said the NHL’s reigning scoring champion. “You’ve got to be ready at all times. You’ve got to be paying attention. If you miss a little detail here and there, it matters, and that’s what it’s all about. That’s what we asked for.” The players’ request to be held even more accountable followed the Oilers’ early playoff exit in late April. Two weeks later, the club dismissed head coach Kris Knoblauch, who guided Edmonton to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances before last season’s first-round exit in six games against the Anaheim Ducks. The Oilers hired Babcock, a Stanley Cup winner with the Detroit Red WIngs in 2009 and bench boss for two Canadian men’s gold-medal-winning squads, and associate coach D.J. Smith a month later. “The standard’s high around here, and it’s something that I love and I support,” McDavid said. “I want the standard to be at the very highest. If he didn’t like practice, he didn’t like practice, and we’ll be better tomorrow.” Forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, whom Babcock called “a massive part of things” for this season’s Oilers and a player who “knows how to play with and without the puck,” said the intense pace of practice has been a positive. “Every drill, we’re doing a lot of running through our systems and stuff that we’re learning, but at the same time, he’s finding ways to get us skating,” said Nugent-Hopkins, the longest-serving Oiler, who is entering his 16th season with the club. How that translates into the line combinations Edmonton deploys, including whether Babcock pairs McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, remains to be seen. Every previous Oilers coach has turned to the franchise’s two biggest stars in key moments over the past decade plus. “I’m going to watch them (McDavid and Draisaitl),” Babcock said. “What we want to do is get to a point where we have a little consistency, and that might just be two of the guys that are consistent and the winger is always changing. I don’t know the answer, but I’m going to work it out.” Following Tuesday’s game against the Winnipeg Jets, the Oilers will play two more exhibition games this week – in Vancouver against the Canucks on Thursday and at their Rogers Place home on Saturday against the Calgary Flames – before they open the regular season on Sept. 29 against the visiting Canucks.
