Oilers Gameday – @ Islanders

After yesterday’s debacle in Montreal, the Oilers are back in action this afternoon (12:30 MST) against the Brooklyn New York Islanders.

I’d say something semi-positive like “it’ll be a good matchup between John Tavares and Taylor Hall” or whatever, but yesterday’s game left a really bad taste in my mouth (plus the pulled pork in my slow cooker is distracting me).

Last Games

Edmonton

5-1 loss to Montreal, after outscoring Columbus and Ottawa 12-3 in the previous 2 games. It was a bad game from top to bottom, to the point that certain rookie phenoms were expressing extreme frustration with their linemates. To a man, the Oilers were pretty terrible; it’s probably hard to believe that I’m saying this unbiased, but Taylor Hall was probably the best Oiler, and he didn’t have an especially great game.

New York

The Islanders played Detroit yesterday afternoon, and they got rolled 5-1 as well. I didn’t watch, but I’m assuming they put forth as much effort as the Oilers did.

Awesome.

Keys to the Game

Edmonton

Play more like they did on Tuesday and Thursday, and not at all like they did yesterday. It looked to me like they were all gripping their sticks a little bit too tight, which mean that passes weren’t hitting their targets, and shots were going wide, and the puck was bouncing, and it was just not good.

So they need to do less of that and just go out there and play that wide open game they’re capable of. (And Taylor, for the love of God, can you please stop carrying the puck to the outside on the rush? Please? For me?)

New York

Don’t do what they did against the Red Wings.

Keep the puck away from Connor, get in front of Talbot. Etc etc.

Players to Watch

Edmonton

*sigh* Connor. Taylor.

Also….watch Justin Schultz and see if you can figure out where his Norris potential is.

New York

John Tavares? I don’t know much about the Islanders, except that their fans are salty when you talk about John Tavares not being a superstar.

Projected Lineups

Edmonton

Taylor Hall – Leon Draisaitl – Teddy Purcell

Benoit Pouliot – Connor McDavid – Jordan Eberle

Zack Kassian – Mark Letestu – Nail Yakupov

Lauri Korpikoski – Matt Hendricks – Iiro Pakarinen

Andrej Sekera – Mark Fayne

Brandon Davidson – Eric Gryba

Darnell Nurse – Justin Schultz

Cam Tal-Bot

New York

Mikhail Grabovski – John Tavares – Ryan Strome

Nikolay Kulemin – Frans Nielsen – Kyle Okposo

Anders Lee – Brock Nelson – Josh Bailey

Matt Martin – Casey Cizikas – Cal Clutterbuck

Travis Hamonic – Calvin de Haan

Nick Leddy – Johnny Boychuk

Thomas Hickey – Marek Zidlicky

Jaroslav Halak

Final Thoughts

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, so I don’t have much to say here. But for the first time in a long time I don’t care who wins this game. I’m just looking forward to the pulled pork. Happy Sunday, y’all.