Edmonton Oilers Pregame Thoughts

Who told them to play a game as good as that one? That’s unfathomable. How dare they confuse Oilers fans like that.

Edmonton entered the second half of a back-to-back road trip and held it together against an elite offensive team. Though the Avalanche have been dealing with depth injuries and have had as unideal a start as our team’s, you still can’t ignore their very high talent level. But the key word is this paragraph is depth, as it was Edmonton’s depth in the lineup that came through more than Colorado’s. Kasperi Kapanen scored his first as an Oiler, Vasily Podkolzin has now scored in his last 3 games, Brett Kulak continues his offensive breakthrough so far, and Ty Emberson was on a penalty kill pairing with Mattias Ekholm. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins getting his second goal in as many games was an empty netter, but it’s nice to see him start to get going as well. It would’ve been nice if Edmonton’s PK streak continued, but they were successful in killing off the next 4 Colorado powerplays after allowing the first one.

How the Oilers managed to keep shutting down the Avalanche is what they should’ve done in some of their games throughout all of November. I was admittedly a little bit concerned that they’d have one of their third period collapses again, but they didn’t. They got saves when they needed to get them, and didn’t suffer a momentum changing gaffe. Saturday night was like nothing we saw the last two months, even more impressive than the Rangers game. I’d call it their best game of the regular season so far, here’s hoping they keep up that sort of play.

Speaking of collapses, tonight’s opponent is one of those that Edmonton did fall flat against. Can they find redemption tonight? The keys to the game are…

Rinse And Repeat: The Golden Knights have the 6th ranked PP and are 5th in GF/G. This should be exactly like the Avalanche game and, just like Colorado, Vegas has also been dealing with depth injuries. So the non-stars on the Oilers need to show up once again and add to their on ice successes.

Eichel Tower: Jack Eichel is the next leading point getter going down the list that Edmonton is skating towards now. He put up 20 points in the month of November and is currently third in points leaguewide as I’m writing this. His left winger, Ivan Barbashev, currently leads the Golden Knights in goals with 12. His right winger, Pavel Dorofeyev, is also holding his own in his third NHL season.

Is Zach Back?: Kris Knoblauch stated before Friday night that Zach Hyman would not play against Utah and Colorado, but could perhaps be available tonight against Vegas. I didn’t and don’t expect him to have another 50+ goal season. But he has struggled with consistency in his offense so far. Might this recent break he had be good for him. If he is coming back for tonight’s game, will he have the same resurgence in his game as Darnell Nurse did in his return?