Oilers Gameday – @ Winnipeg: Pardy in the WPG

The Oilers are in Winnipeg today to take on the Jets, in a matchup that will see Adam Pardy play his old team for the first time since being picked up on waivers by the Oilers last month.

Today also marks official confirmation of a Heritage Classic being played between the Oilers and the Jets in Winnipeg on October 23rd. It has been announced that Wayne Gretzky will captain the Oilers alumni team, and I am pretty excited that my all-time favourite Oiler (Jari Kurri) will be back in Oiler blue one more time.

Last Game

The Oilers were in Columbus on Friday night, and things did not go as well as expected. Instead of building on their momentum from Thursday night’s 4-0 win over the Flyers, the Oilers looked pretty pedestrian out there. Laurent Brossoit got the start in net, and he let in two goals in the first three minutes, which dug a hole JUST deep enough that the Oilers couldn’t get out of it. Each time the Oilers scored, the Blue Jackets retaliated within a minute. Without spotting Columbus those two goals, the Oilers might have been able to squeak out with a win.

I looked at a fancy stats chart on Friday night, though, and while I definitely don’t understand all of what I saw, I do know that the Oilers (led by my favourite, Taylor Hall) outplayed the Blue Jackets at almost every position. It’s a shame that their good play didn’t translate into another win, but considering that they were playing their 4th game in 6 nights (and it was the second half of a back-to-back, AND Columbus hadn’t played since Monday), the loss wasn’t a huge surprise.

Keys to the Game

• More pucks to the net. The Oilers don’t get garbage goals anymore, partly because they don’t have Ryan Smyth taking a beating in the crease and partly because they’re really good at cycling the puck down low and getting a weak shot toward the side of the net.
• Friday night notwithstanding,t he Oilers have been playing pretty decent hockey of late. If they keep doing that, stay out of the penalty box, and get some actual quality chances on net, they’ll probably come away with a win.

Players to Watch

Connor McDavid. He’ll probably do at least one amazing thing today.

Adam Pardy mentioned this morning that he’s looking forward to playing the Jets, and I’d imagine that it has something to do with them being the team that let him go.

Taylor Hall is good at hockey, and one of these days he’s going to go on a tear. I just hope it happens this season.

Projected Lineups

Edmonton

Nail Yakupov – Connor McDavid – Jordan Eberle

Taylor Hall – Leon Draisaitl – Patrick Maroon

Lauri Korpikoski – Mark Letestu – Zack Kassian

Matt Hendricks – Anton Lander – Adam Cracknell

Andrej Sekera – Mark Fayne

Adam Pardy – Brandon Davidson

Darnell Nurse – Adam Clendening

Cam Tal-Bot

Winnipeg

Drew Stafford – Mark Schiefele – Blake Wheeler

Mathieu Perrault – Alex Burmistrov – Joel Armia

Chris Thorburn – Adam Lowry – Marko Dano

Matt Halischuk – Andrew Copp – JC Lipon

Tobias Enstrom – Dustin Byfuglien

Josh Morrissey – Tyler Myers

Ben Chiarot – Paul Postma

Ondrej Pavelec

Final Thoughts

A word on the coach’s challenge:

If there has ever been a rule introduced in professional sports that slows the game down more than the coach’s challenge does in an NHL game, I’d like to know about it. I understand, in principle, why the challenge exists but I fail to see any measure of success with it, especially when it’s a poorly kept secret that teams are using the challenge as a means to a long time-out rather than to actually challenge a play.

There’s nothing worse than a goal being scored, only to have the team who was scored on challenge whether or not the play was an inch offside. If the linesman doesn’t call the offside, then it shouldn’t be able to be challenged. In fact, nothing on the ice should be challenged. I think they should do away with video review altogether and allow the on-ice officials to do their job. As Taylor Hall said earlier in the season, a referee having to look at the video review based on a coach’s challenge doesn’t want to admit he’s wrong in front of 18,000 people, nor should he have to.

The game, despite all its technological advances, is still played by human beings on a slippery sheet of ice. There will be mistakes made on the ice (missed passes, a tip-in own goal, a blown call by the referee) because the participants and officials are human. The human error in the game isn’t erased with the addition of things like video review and coach’s challenges or having a ‘war room’ in Toronto, it’s just amplified as a result.

The human error is part of the beauty of the game – a short-handed breakaway doesn’t happen unless someone is playing their position poorly, and a goal doesn’t go in from outside the blue line without a goalie making a mistake. But another, larger, part of the game is the excitement of watching two teams try to beat each other. I’d much rather watch that than see both teams get outsmarted by a tablet with a 6-inch screen.