Today the Oilers face off against the Minnesota Wild for the first time this season, on a day where all 32 teams in the league are playing. The idea of having all 32 teams play in one night is a cool idea in theory: hockey everywhere all night long. But looking at the realities of it, it’s not quite that amazing. First off, to prep for it, there was only one game on last night and tomorrow there is only one game scheduled. One fun crazy night for two boring days, is that trade-off worth it? I’m not convinced. Also, when you look at the start times around the league, the first game kicks off at 4:00 MST, or even worse, 3:00 PST if you live on the west coast. If you are a Maple Leafs fan who works a regular job on the west coast, it’ll be very hard to catch any of the game today. The last game of the night kicks off at 9:00 MST, or worse, 11:00 EST. That game is between Vegas and Philadelphia. The Flyers are an eastern time team, and their game starts at 11:00pm. I feel bad for those fans. A cool idea in theory to have all 32 teams in action, in reality not so great.
Either way, the Oilers are in action at 7:00pm MST, a perfect time for a game. They are taking on the Wild, who the Oilers were 1-2 against last season. Tonight marks the first night this season that the Oilers will be without captain Connor McDavid, after suffering an injury against the Jets on Saturday night. The Oilers are currently 1-3-1 in a year when they have been one of the top favorites to win the Stanley Cup. Having their star player and captain go down to injury, they are not in a good spot right now. They need to start clawing back some points in the fight to get back to .500 and above in the coming weeks. That needs to start today; they need to start crawling out of the hole before it’s too deep and they are out of contention by Thanksgiving. That means the Oilers need some key players to step up tonight. Let’s look at the projected lineup and talk about who needs to get going.
Line Up
According to Jack Michaels on Twitter these are the Oilers projected lines for tonight
Kane-Draisaitl-Janmark
Foegele-RNH-Hyman
Holloway-McLeod-Brown
Erne/Ryan
Ekholm-Bouchard
Nurse-Ceci
Kulak-Desharnais/Broberg
Campbell
Skinner
Who needs to step up?
With McDavid out and no room to call up anybody, the Oilers are forced to go with an 11-7 lineup tonight and for the foreseeable future. There are some players in this configuration who are going to have to take a big step up if the Oilers are looking to secure victory tonight.
First up, Evander Kane. He has played very poorly at 5-on-5 so far this season. He is sitting at a 14.29% GF (Goals For) so far this season at even strength. Comparing that to an xGF (Expected Goals For) of only 35.48%, Kane has been on the ice for way more quality chances against than he has for the Oilers. Riding shotgun with Draisaitl on the first line, he is going to have to step up his game because it doesn’t look like Janmark will really be bringing much to the table for the Oilers on the top line.
They’ve been playing really well together and look dangerous almost every night so far this season. It’s time to cash in. For the Oilers to succeed tonight, the line of Holloway-McLeod-Brown needs to put together some actual offense. Holloway is riding a xGF% of 60.98 but still hasn’t cashed in 5 on 5 yet this season. Ryan McLeod is also rocking a nice 55.32 xGF% with nothing to show for it. The time is now for those boys to cash in.
Defensively, Bouchard has been struggling. Now is the time to take a second, realize what’s at stake, and take a deep breath to reset. If Bouchard can do that, I have no doubt he can get back to being a good top-pairing defenseman, as he showed he could be last season. Ekholm isn’t quite up to speed yet either, so Bouchard can’t fully rely on Ekholm to do the heavy lifting. He needs to do his part to help limit the goals against.
Goaltending. Goaltending needs to step up its game going into tonight’s tilt with the Wild. The Oilers’ sv% through 5 games has not been great: 0.750, 0.750, 0.977, 0.875, 0.888. Can you spot the outlier? Only one game so far have the Oilers had a sv% above 0.900, and that happens to be the one game they’ve won this season. Can a lot of it be chalked up to bad defensive reads? Yeah, probably. Can we still expect the goalies to make a few more important saves? Yeah, we sure can. If the Oilers have any hope of winning, they need, at bare minimum, some league average goaltending. Through 4 of the first 5 games, the Oilers have had below replacement level goaltending. Currently, Jack Campbell is sitting on a 0.902 sv%. If he can even just hold that steady, the Oilers will have a good chance to win. With McDavid out, maybe they need closer to a 0.910 sv%. Campbell is capable of that, he showed it against Nashville, he showed it in the preseason. We need the goaltending to right the ship if the Oilers have any hope of getting through the playoffs this season. We’ll wait and talk about the goaltending tomorrow.
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