Edmonton Oilers Pregame Thoughts

The 4th goal Edmonton allowed while the crowd sang Livin’ On A Prayer was a reversal of Evander Kane’s goal in the second round last year. Did anyone else think that, or just me?

I wouldn’t call Saturday night’s win the prettiest, but given recent circumstances, it was still impressive. Hard to complain too much when you score five goals without your top 2 players in the lineup. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored his 4th career hat trick and put up 3 points for the 3rd time in 4 games. The roster’s longest-serving Oiler wasn’t having a great season before this past week. It’s great to see him start picking it up at the right time. The next few games might also be his opportunity to take over the driver’s seat a little more. Jeff Skinner now has 3 goals in 2 games, played the second-most minutes out of Edmonton’s forwards, and looked the best on a line with Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown. This will surely have him starting all games in the top 6 now, right? It was cool to see the 2nd powerplay unit score a goal as well. There were 2 PP goals that night. How funny it would be if they just now went back to being PP merchants with a depleted offense?

Edmonton’s all-time record without Connor McDavid in their lineup is 24-28-10, and the all-time record without Leon Draisaitl is 23-34-8. They improved to a 2-1 all-time record without both of them after this weekend. It’s been announced they’re unlikely to play any of the team’s three games this week. The last time neither of them dressed for a game was last year’s final regular-season game, and they lost badly. But they weren’t dressing a lot of their key players before the Playoffs anyway. Tonight will be a bigger test without them against a much tougher opponent. The keys to the game are…

Edmonton Oilers Thoughts:

Shut It Down: The last time the Oilers played the Stars was the game right after the Trade Deadline. Edmonton had a 5-1 lead going into the third period, and Dallas scored three unanswered goals. Our team still won, but it ended closer than we would’ve preferred. I can’t see the Oilers jumping onto that big of a lead against this team again. But if, emphasis on “if”, it’s even a 1 or 2 goal lead, don’t let Dallas come back again.

Discipline: Against both the Jets and Kraken, the Oilers took a minor penalty really late in the third period. I would’ve liked to see Stuart Skinner stop the 4th goal he allowed against Seattle, but it was a PP goal on the rush after his team had just scored an empty netter, which was also a shorthanded goal. The game before that, they were tied with Winnipeg, and that penalty trouble may’ve cost them a loser point in the standings if they weren’t careful. Toe the line between playing intense and smart.

Backend: Throughout this homestand, the Oilers have 11 points from their defensemen. That’s one way to get secondary scoring without 97 and 29. Miro Heiskanen is still out of the lineup for Dallas, but his team’s defense combines for 123 points. If the Stars had Heiskanen playing, the total would be 148. Compare that to Edmonton’s 164 points from their defense. If Jake Walman played the entire season as an Oiler, make that 196. Obviously, don’t sacrifice preventing points against, but this is also a matchup to look out for.