Even in a losing effort, congrats to Corey Perry for scoring his first goal as a member of the Edmonton Oilers. He was placed with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl halfway through the third period, and those three looked pretty good together. I expect to see that line again in today’s game. Also, add him to the list of Oilers players to score a goal before Connor Brown. We’ve seen that happen two games in a row now.
I feel for Brown, I really do. The penalty he took 200ft away from his net late in the second period resulted in a goal against. Edmonton kept getting into penalty trouble in the third period, not ideal when you’re down by three. But a few minutes after Perry made it a two goal game, Brown had a glorious chance to help inch the Oilers even closer to tying the game, and he hit the crossbar on a backhand shot. Imagine if he did score there. One, the whole Oilers bench would’ve gone hyper and ecstatic for him. And second, there would’ve still been a decent amount of time to get a tying goal afterward, and there’d have been more motivation to do so. Instead, Brown continues to be a whipping boy for the team. I never bother getting excited when he’s part of a 2v1 rush with Mattias Janmark. I don’t know what this man did to anger the Hockey Gods, but he’s clearly cursed. You can only bring up his injury from last season for so long, and his performance bonus looks worse every day. Zach Hyman was robbed by Jordan Binnington twice, but it’s easier to forgive a guy who has 32 goals. On top of that, the next time a team thinks about pulling the goalie, they should probably not do it too early and wait until they have legit possession of the puck in the offensive zone.
I love Vincent Desharnais, but he played a terrible game as far as discipline goes. Four minor penalties on the night, one of them being an unsportsmanlike penalty he was getting at the same time as another penalty in the third period; so the Oilers had to kill off an ill-timed double minor. They did kill it off, which is good. It’s easy to forget that St. Louis was just 2/8 on the powerplay on Thursday, but Edmonton’s fall from the 4th best penalty kill to the 13th best after the All-Star break is still startling. Hopefully, killing off six minor penalties in that game will spark an improvement on the PK in future games.
The Oilers have two afternoon games on this long weekend to end the road trip. They don’t have the most positive history with afternoon starts. The keys to the game are…
Offense Suppression: In the first meeting between these teams on November 2nd, Dallas had the 30th ranked PP. Since then, it’s ranked 13th. Edmonton has to show more discipline and spend less time in the box against a team that won a game 9-2 while our game against the Blues was going on.
The Flying Duch-Man: Matt Duchene had his seven-year contract bought out last summer with three years still remaining on it. This season, making $3M on his current one-year deal, the 33-year-old centerman has 52 points through 53 games in his 15th NHL season. Talking about “Offense Suppression” in my first key, this is one of those forwards that the Oilers need to suppress most.
Trusty Sidekick: Stuart Skinner has allowed 15 goals in four games this month. Worries about him showing the same fatigue he had last season are proving to be true. It was announced yesterday that Calvin Pickard would get the start today. I would expect Jake Oettinger to get the start for Dallas. Pickard has been solid enough in the games he’s played as an Oiler and will perhaps need to be better than just solid enough against one of the best goalies in the league.
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