After salvaging their road trip with a 4-2 win over Boston on Sunday, the Oilers are back home for 2 games before heading south to Calgary.
The Oilers are still 7th in the Pacific (9-13-2), and are facing a pretty long, steep climb if they want to make the playoffs this year.
Do I have it right that the Oilers need to play at a ~105 pt/82 games pace over the final 58 games to reach 94 pts and have a legit shot at the post-season?
Ouch.
— Alan Hull (@alanhull) November 27, 2017
It’s important that the Oilers put together a solid effort tonight, because their next two games are against teams who could sink them.
Keys to the Game
Edmonton
- More shots on net than the other guys
- No really. They need to outchance and outwork the Coyotes. It’s one of those games where we used to guarantee an Oilers loss (first game back after a road trip, Arizona as the opponent) and hopefully this trend has stopped for good.
Arizona
- Force the Oilers to play to the perimeter, and get lots of shots on net. The more pucks on net, the higher the chance of a garbage goal. It’s really simple.
Players to Watch
Edmonton
- Leon Draisaitl got called out by coach Todd McLellan for his lack of effort the other night, and maybe he needs to play ‘for the team’ more. I don’t know. Something needs to happen; maybe Drai can get it started.
Arizona
- Dylan Strome has been called up, and should be looking forward to playing against his big brother. Maybe this will give Chiarelli a chance to look at the Strome he should have acquired.
Projected Lineups
Edmonton
Milan Lucic – Connor McDavid – Mike Cammalleri
Patrick Maroon – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Anton Slepyshev
Drake Caggiula – Leon Draisaitl – Ryan Strome
Iiro Pakarinen – Mark Letestu – Zack Kassian
Darnell Nurse – Adam Larsson
Oscar Klefbom – Matt Benning
Yohann Auvitu – Kris Russell
Cam Talbot
Arizona
Brendan Perlini – Derek Stepan – Tobias Rieder
Clayton Keller – Brad Richardson – Dylan Strome
Max Domi – Christian Dvorak – Christian Fischer
Zac Rinaldo – Nick Cousins – Anthony Duclair
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Jason Demers
Alex Goligoski – Niklas Hjalmarsson
Kevin Connauton – Luke Schenn
Scott Wedgewood
Notes
Peter Chiarelli spoke to the media this morning, and didn’t say a whole lot. It was reminiscent of asking your mom what’s for supper and her only answer is “supper”.
Chia isn’t happy with the state of the team and was uncomfortable being asked questions about his offseason moves (or lack thereof); he was visibly rattled at the podium and really didn’t have much to offer that couldn’t already be ascertained by the performance of the team.
The really difficult part of this is that the deficiencies in the roster were there all along (even last season) and no one thought to make any changes. Now that the results aren’t coming, the lack of change feels even more short-sighted.
Toronto’s in town on Thursday. That’s a big test.
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