That was certainly a fun way to start a homestand. Of all the teams to come back from three goals down against, I would never expect it to be the Boston Bruins. But that’s why hockey games are played on the ice, not on paper.
Corey Perry is exactly as advertised when he came to the Edmonton Oilers. He fought when his team was down 3-1. True, Boston still went up 4-1 after that fight. But the Oilers kept clawing back because they got that spark from the fight, and Perry even scored the 4-4 tying goal. His offensive effectiveness in Chicago has even started translating, with five points through his first nine games as an Oiler. Even when they let in the 5-4 goal, you’d expect a moment like that to be a backbreaker, but they just went back and tied the game again. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins missed the game due to illness, so Warren Foegele occupied his spot on the top line and scored a pair of goals. I feel that Foegele should stay in the top six, first or second line, longer. He always plays his best hockey there, and it showed again there. Every goal the Oilers scored was around the goal crease. As fun as it is to watch Edmonton do those rushes, they need to learn to score more garbage goals once in a while and not just rely on perimeter shots. I wasn’t fond of Cody Ceci’s game; I didn’t like how he looked on three or four of the goals against. And Evander Kane should never see 3v3 ice again. It wasn’t as bad as seeing Milan Lucic do 3v3 OT years ago, but still not ideal.
You still can’t complain too much about the result. They managed to get a seemingly impossible point against the second-best team in the league. But that “bad second period, good third period” pattern needs to stop. I’ve mentioned it too many times. One point to open the five game homestand is a pretty good start, ending it with seven or eight would be nice. The keys to the game are…
Flower: Marc-Andre Fleury recently became the fourth goaltender to play 1000 NHL games after Martin Brodeur(1266), Roberto Luongo(1044), and Patrick Roy(1029). He also surpassed Roy for second all-time in most wins by a goalie. But overall, he’s had a pretty up-and-down season statistically.
Not Your Uncle’s Wild: The Oilers still lose more games than win against this team, that hasn’t changed. But they’re good if you want to try scoring lots of goals on them. 3.3 GA/G and 30th penalty kill at 74.5%. They had to win a 10-7 game on Family Day. The neutral zone trap and boring defense seem to have been banned from the State of Hockey.
No Surgeon For Spurgeon: Minnesota’s top defenseman, Jared Spurgeon, has had a really unlucky season with injuries. He missed all of October, missed some more games in December, missed all of January, and has been missing all of February. The 21-year-old rookie Brock Faber has done a modest job taking over, with 33 points and an even +/- rating of 0 through 56 games.
