Game Day 17: Nashville at Edmonton
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Edmonton Oilers are down to 18 healthy skaters at the moment, and will go with the ones at their disposal when they host Nashville Predators tonight.
As per Tony Brar of Oilers TV, “Viktor Arvidsson will not play tonight vs. NSH. Out with a minor injury… Kris Knoblauch says the Oilers will go 11/7 in tonight’s matchup vs. NSH.”
Arvidsson played a normal-ish 14:04 against the Islanders on Tuesday, his final shift ending in the game’s 59th minute, which tends to support the “minor” descriptor of his ailment.
With GM Stan Bowman in no mood to derail his Plan A to accrue as much cap space as possible, it’s logical for the squad to proceed with Plan B by going a forward short while adding an extra defenceman to the mix. That opens a spot for Travis Dermott whose last appearance was in Calgary back on Nov 03. Since then he’s spent 4 games in the press box, the longest stretch for any Oiler on the streamlined roster so far this season.
Knoblauch was interviewed on Oilers Now on Wednesday and discussed the options available pending Arvidsson’s status.
“If he can’t go, we could call somebody out but we also talked about going 11 and 7. Something we talked a lot a lot about going into the season doing more of, and we haven’t yet, but if Arvidsson isn’t available there’s a good possibility we are going 11 and 7.”
Host Bob Stauffer followed up with a question specific to LW Jeff Skinner who in recent games has found himself in a fourth-line role, playing a team-low 8:53 vs. the Islanders. Knoblauch responded:
“When you’ve only got 11 forwards, there is a lot of double shifting. Whether you’re a winger or centreman, if you’re playing well you tend to get that extra shift. Maybe he’s in the same spot but we doubleshift one of our top centremen in that fourth line role. There’s more opportunities for everyone because we’re missing that one guy.”
Oilers fans saw plenty of 11/7 during the Jay Woodcroft era. Knoblauch’s predecessor had quite a few tricks up his sleeve, at one time leaving a hole at 2C and deploying a “donut line” within the top six, er, five. Another Woodcroft manoeuvre was to start games and periods with the tenth and eleventh forwards, typically Klim Kostin and Derek Ryan, and place a power centre like Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl between them. That not only got the “extras” into the game right away in a meaningful situation, but afforded them the opportunity to line up with top talent.
That’s one thing to watch for tonight. Another is how the seven-man defence unit will be deployed. It’s virtually certain that top pairing Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard will remain joined at the hip, but will Knoblauch and defence coach Paul Coffey choose to run Darnell Nurse with Brett Kulak and then rotate the remaining three? Or will each of Nurse and Kulak spend some time with each other but also some with other partners, as has been recent practice? How will that seventh man fit into the mix?
Calvin Pickard has been confirmed as the starting goalie, no big surprise given he backstopped the Oilers to a pair of regulation wins at Nashville earlier this season, delivering strong performances in both. Pickard’s challenge will be to bring his strong road game (3-0-0, 1.67, .938) to home ice where he’s had his struggles (3 GP, 0-2-0, 3.77, .791), “highlighted” by a .000 save percentage at home. 5 shots, 5 goals against, ugh. Small sample sizes rule the roost this early in the season of course, especially for a backup, and even more so when the available numbers are split into still smaller pieces.
Edmonton’s magic number
Lots of scrutiny on the goaltending in general so far this young season, but if you’re looking for a magic bullet, it’s come at the offensive end of the sheet.
The Oilers have split their 16 games. In the 8 losses (highlighted), they have scored 2 or fewer goals each and every time and a paltry 9 altogether. The 8 wins? At least 3 goals in each including 4 or more in all but one of those, for a total of 35 goals. That’s 1.13 goals per loss, 4.38 per win.
Things are looking up
The Oilers offensive fortunes have long been tied to the performance of McDavid, generally a pretty secure place to be. But #97 has had his struggles early in the current season, missing 3 games to injury and no doubt playing at less than 100% in others. Indeed, a week ago he had just 10 points through 11 GP and of course none at all in the 3 games he’d sat out. But things have turned around in a major way in the last two games, with McDavid producing his first 3-point game of the season on Saturday in Vancouver followed by his first 4-point game against NYI on Tuesday. Just like that he’s soared from 115th in the scoring race to 35th, with further upward mobility a strong likelihood.
The captain enters tonight’s game on the cusp of a major milestone, having scored 999 points in a storied career that includes five scoring titles. A single point tonight will add a fourth digit (and a comma!) to that total in his 659th game, which would stand as the fourth fastest in NHL history. Only Wayne Gretzky (a ridiculous 424 games), Mario Lemieux (513) and Mike Bossy (656) will have done so faster. All were stars of the high-scoring 1980s.
McDavid is also poised to become the fourth Oiler in franchise history to hit the mark. No surprise that the top three were also stars of the 1980s, led by the incomparable Gretzky. Just 10 players have scored as many as 500 points as an Oiler, among them three members of the current squad.
Of the prior three, only Gretzky scored his 1,000th point on home ice, blowing through the milestone in typical fashion with a 6-point outing against the Kings in December of 1984 that raised his career total from 999 to 1,005. Kurri hit the milestone at St. Louis in Edmonton’s first game of calendar 1990 after scoring his first 997 points in the ’80s. Messier meanwhile was involved in a rare double milestone when his 1,000th point was an assist on long-time sidekick Glenn Anderson’s 400th career goal at Philadelphia in 1991. They joked about cutting the puck in half.
Both Kurri and Messier were 29 years old when they reached 1,000, while Gretzky did so at the astonishing age of 23.
Connor McDavid lands somewhere in between at age 27. Fourth among historical Oilers in raw points, he ranks second in points-per-game despite his era disadvantage with an astonishing 1.52. That’s by far the best of the current century. Among players with 500+ GP since 2000, Sidney Crosby is a distant second at 1.25, followed by Nikita Kucherov (1.21), Draisaitl(1.18) and Artemi Pananrin (1.17).
All-time, he ranks third all-time in both points (1.52) and assists (1.002) per-game behind only the legendary Gretzky and Lemieux.
Put another way, in the 45 seasons that Edmonton has had an NHL franchise, Oil fans have been doubly blessed to watch the greatest offensive players of both the 20th and 21st centuries wearing home silks while at the peak of their powers.
Tonight’s opponent
The Nashville Predators come to town to complete the season series, having already dropped 4-2 and 5-1 decisions to the Oil in the Music City. The Preds currently are tied with Montreal for last overall, with a 5-9-2 record through 16 games. It’s been an awful start for a traditionally competitive club that has made the playoffs in 15 of 19 seasons during the cap era.
The Preds are led offensively by Filip Forsberg, whose 8 goals and 13 points both comfortably lead the club. He’s scored 14-12-26 in 27 career games vs. Edmonton. #1 netminder Juuse Saros is expected to get the start tonight. He has decent percentages of 2.64, .911 that bely his 4-7-2 W-L-O mark.
The Oilers have had their way with the Predators in recent years, especially Draisaitl who has posted a ridiculous 25-16-41 in his last 16 head-to-head games, doing much of that damage right in Nashville.
Worth remembering last November, however, when the Preds came to Edmonton as heavy underdogs after an early-season 6-1 loss in Nashville, only to turn the tables with a 5-2 win in Rogers Place. The Oil have no reason to take this opponent lightly as they pursue their first 3-game win streak of the season.
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