On Tuesday afternoon, the Edmonton Oilers recalled forward Dylan Holloway from the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors. This season, in 18 games for Bakersfield, he has ten goals and six assists for 16 points. In 32 games for Edmonton, he has three goals and one assist for 4 points. His last game in the NHL was on March 5th in Boston, an Overtime win against the Bruins, playing 11:01 minutes of ice time. He has played mostly bottom 6 minutes with the Oilers. With the team’s emphasis on depth and insurance heading into the Playoffs, as well as Kris Knoblauch working on more line-up ideas in the last little while, where would Holloway slot in on the roster with this call-up?
Connor McDavid was not on the ice during Tuesday’s practice and is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury, considered maintenance-related. It’s believed he felt off after a scoring chance in Calgary on Saturday night, where he slid and collided with defenseman Rasmus Andersson. He could miss Wednesday night’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights. McDavid needs one more assist to be the 4th 100 assist player in NHL history. Being listed as just day-to-day shouldn’t put too much of a damper on his chances to achieve that milestone, and every Oilers fan wants him to. But you also want him to be fully healthy for the Playoffs. He tried playing through an injury between October and November when his team was one of the very worst in the league. Needless to say, that completely staggered his performance. Two of Edmonton’s six remaining games are against Arizona(twice) and San Jose. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable with his body playing against those teams, but unless he truly does feel like he can still attempt getting the 100th apple unscratched before Game 1, I’d rather not see him make the same mistake again, and I’m sure with a bigger prize in his sights, he may feel the same way. We’ll see where this news takes us after this week is over.
