Game Day 59: Edmonton at Florida
Edmonton Oilers return to the site of their greatest disappointment on Thursday when they take on the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in Sunrise, FL.
That’s the same building where the Oilerts dropped Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, 2-1, back on Jun 24. In fact, the Oilers lost 3 SCF games there, scoring 0, 1 and 1 goal in those games. Only in Game 5, a 5-3 Edmonton win powered by a 4-point night from Connor McDavid, did the Oilers find their offensive legs in the Sunshine State.
That was June’s problem. February’s is to find some kind of solution for a run of terrible hockey in a variety of NHL rinks for tonight’s visitors. On the one-month anniversary of their last regulation win, the Oilers enter the contest riding a 4-game losing streak that has seen them outscored by 22 goals to 11 and outshot by 134 to 94. Pretty much the entire squad has been taking on water, from the netminders to the blueliners to the forward group to a coaching staff that has struggled to push the right buttons.
To that end, coach Kris Knoblauch is going all the way back to Plan A, or as close to it as he can muster.
The first and third lines are intact from those that took the Panthers to the limit. Notable is the reunion of the Mattias Janmark – Adam Henrique – Connor Brown trio that had a splendid final series and indeed were the starting trio in that fateful Game 7. Janmark would go on to score Edmonton’s lone goal that night.
The first line of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – McDavid – Zach Hyman was also a unit for much of that series, and indeed a frequent combination over the last 3 seasons, posting a goal share north of 60% (62 for, 40 against as a trio) from 2022-25. They’ve fallen on hard times of late both individually and collectively playing in a variety of combinations. Tonight they’re back together, at least to start.
The second line, meanwhile, contains just one member of the trio that started Game 7. That would be the brilliant Leon Draisaitl, who on that occasion was flanked by Warren Foegele and Dylan Holloway, who both subsequently departed the scene as free agents. Tonight Draisaitl’s wingers will be Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson, both signed to handsome contracts on Jul 01 in the expectation they would be the scoring wingers Draisaitl has generally been lacking. Hasn’t quite worked out that way, but tonight that trio will be given another audition. Of particular interst is Skinner, by cold reckoning Edmonton’s hottest winger, taking another bungee jump from the pressbox to the top six. More on him in a bit.
Tonight’s fourth line consist of the remaining bits and pieces, with Corey Perry the only returnee from the Finals. His temporary linemates will be Vasily Podkolzin, acquired in mid-summer in a trade to replace the departed Holloway, and Kasperi Kapanen, picked up on waivers early in the season. It will be Kapanen who will line up in the pivot position despite his lack of experience in that role. He’s taken just 165 faceoffs in his 504 NHL games and won just 56 of those (34%).
Youngster Matt Savoie will draw the short straw after 3 largely promising games, mostly on Draisaitl’s wing. Instead, Knoblauch has chosen to go with the most experienced group he can muster. Of the twelve, only Podkolzin is younger than 28 or has fewer than 500 games in the NHL.
The Oilers will be missing a key player on the back end as Darnell Nurse will be held out with an injury he sustained in Tampa on Tuesday when he crashed into the boards after Bolts winger Mitchell Chaffee ducked under his attempted check. Nurse toughed it out to finish that contest but will sit tonight. Best news from the above is Knoblauch’s declaration that he is “day-to-day”; that news could have been a whole lot worse.
Edmonton’s first pairing of Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard remains intact, even as both stalwarts are struggling mightily at this point in time. Brett Kulak and the returning John Klingberg are listed as the third pairing, but expect them to log second minutes, while the all-righty pair of Ty Emberson and Troy Stecher will also get some shifts.
No surprises in goal, where Stu Skinner and Sergei Bobrovsky will match up, as they did for all seven games of the Finals. Skinner remains under the microscope for his erratic play in recent weeks, and desperately needs to right the ship. To accomplish that he’ll need more defensive help than he’s been getting of late. It’s unrealistic and unfair to blame all of Edmonton’s woes on goaltending; the whole team has been poor, from the netminders on out.
That poor play includes some unexpected players. Over the past 5 games, McDavid is goalless with a staggering -12 traditional plus/minus. He has no goals in that span, while all 3 of his assists have come on the powerplay. At 5v5, he’s been on for 0 (zero) goals for, 9 against. It’s by some distance the worst stretch of his spectacular career.
Ekholm too has posted a minus figure in each of his last 5 games with a net -9 over that span. Edmonton’s most reliable defender has been struggling through illness for the past several weeks and it has taken a toll on his game.
The hottest Oiler in recent weeks has been Jeff Skinner, who returns to action tonight after yet another turn in the press box for reasons unknown. Skinner had a highly disappointing start to the season, but has been more than solid since the calendar turned to 2025. In the 2 months since then, he’s posted 5-4-9, +5 in 15 GP, doing most of that damage at 5v5.
Skinner leads the Oilers over that span in both goals and points per 60 minutes at 5v5 and also leads in shots. This has not come at the expense of poor defence, at least not if actual goals are our guide. In his 2½ hours of ice time, the Oilers have outscored their opposition 9-4; put another way, Skinner alone has scored more goals (5) than have his combined opponents! Yet somehow he has been scratched no fewer than 6 times in that time. It’s baffling to put it politely.
The other standout name on the above table is the one circled in the #10 position. Lest you think McDavid’s slump is temporary or recent, this is a 21-game span that encompasses fully a quarter of the season. Something is not right.
Hard to tell what’s going to turn things around for the free-falling Oilers on either the individual or collective level. Perhaps it’ll be the sour smell of revenge that turns the key for the disjointed group. Until those tumblers drop, the preseason Stanley Cup favourites look like anything but.
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and on Bluesky Social @brucemccurdy.bsky.social
Follow me on X-Twitter @BruceMcCurdy
and on Bluesky Social @brucemccurdy.bsky.social