Did you miss watching Oilers games for a week? So did I. It feels good to be back, even with where Edmonton finds themselves in the standings. We’re a quarter of the way into the season; three quarters is still a pretty long time. Since last week Thursday, the St. Louis Blues hold the second Wild Card spot with 27 points. The Oilers have 19 points with two games in hand on the Blues and a bunch of other teams to leapfrog. With the amount of days off they had, I merely expected the gap in points to be just a tad higher. But I’ll take eight, just so long as Edmonton builds on the winning streak they put up before tonight. They start a six-game homestand tonight; how it plays out should determine whether the Oilers can still save themselves from themselves. Two of the opponents, including tonight’s, are in the top three of their respective divisions. One of them is in a Wild Card spot and got their #1 goalie back from injury. And the other three are around the same position as Edmonton, points-wise. If this team wants to make a comeback, and I believe they can, they can’t finish this homestand with less than eight points. The month of December just started, but we’ll like their chances more depending on where they are on the week of Christmas.
News came out that defenseman Philip Broberg is open to a trade out of Edmonton. I can’t say I blame him. Even with the new coaching staff, he can’t win a permanent spot just as a third-pairing defenseman. The 8th overall pick in 2019 has not been panning out the way Ken Holland envisioned. He’ll have to benefit from a change of scenery, and then we’ll all sulk about why he wasn’t succeeding with our team. It happens from time to time. But this news does make me think that Holland isn’t really that much in charge anymore. We know he’s retiring at the end of the year, but keeping Broberg looked like a ship Holland was always willing to die on. Most general managers feel more attached to players they drafted. Return aside, trading someone you drafted or signed seems like an admittance to making the wrong move in the first placeInin fact, shortly after this news was announced, Holland stated that he didn’t really give Broberg’s agent permission to speak to other teams. This disconnect is similar to what we saw after the coaching change when Holland said he spoke to the players and Jeff Jackson said he didn’t speak to the leadership core. If other people really are calling most of the shots right now, just make that clearer so Holland doesn’t contradict what’s actually going on. Picking Broberg was a risky and unexpected choice at the time. The backfire in that risk is highlighted even more with this news, also considering the prospects who were taken after him.
A lot of hockey insiders have been pointing out that Jack Campbell could be called back up to Edmonton from Bakersfield this month. He started his AHL stint awfully but improved as the stint went on. As I’m writing this, he is sporting a .893 SV% in seven games with the Condors, just slightly better than his .873 SV% in five games with the Oilers this season. He played three outstanding games late in November, but his last game isn’t all that favourable to fans. Stuart Skinner can’t play every game, but I’m not sure the amount of time Campbell got has been enough time to warrant a comeback yet. Maybe two more weeks of solid play in Bakersfield might change people’s minds. It just seems too early for most in the Oilers fanbase to trust him right now.
The road to a holiday miracle starts now. The keys to the game are…
Have A Better Start: The first meeting between Edmonton and Carolina was the game right before Edmonton’s recent four-game winning streak. They allowed four goals after the ten-minute mark of the first period. The game was already over after just those five minutes of hockey. It’s always the odd, unexplainable shifts that deflate this team horribly. If you have a bad shift, don’t let it dictate the rest of the game. Move on and worry about the next shift to make up for errors.
Any Chance Can Be A Good Chance: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wise words from 99 himself. Connor Hellebuyck looked like he was going to completely stone the Oilers on Thursday night last week, until Darnell Nurse scored a tying goal late in the third period with a shot after he’d just entered the zone. Even with a bit of a screen, it was the sort of goal that someone of Hellebuyck’s caliber would like to have back. Edmonton had the game on their side after that, eventually sealing the win in regulation. Make the night difficult for whoever the Hurricanes have in net. Force a bad rebound. Find an angle that the goalie isn’t paying enough attention to and bank the puck off of that. Put him on the wrong side of a highlight. Just so long as the puck crosses the goal line.
Rested Or Rust: From a fan’s perspective, rest is good. From a player’s perspective, they’d sometimes rather keep playing so that they don’t feel the rust in their legs when they step onto the ice. Will the Oilers benefit from the five-day break they just had? Or will they feel too relaxed from the days off and struggle to mentally start the game right away?
