Oilers Gameday – @ Minnesota Wild

It’s the third game of the Oilers four game road trip, and tonight the team with a new look between the pipes roles in to Minnesota. General manager Craig MacTavish made some waves last night and we’ll get a chance to see new goalie Ben Scrivens in goal with his first start as an Oilers.

The Oilers haven’t won yet during this trip, with a loss to Chicago on Sunday, and then again losing to Dallas on Tuesday. Maybe a new look and a motivated goalie will be what it takes to manage a win on the road.

The Wild are playing their 1,000^th game in franchise history tonight, and will look to get a win for the diehard Minnesota fans. The team from Minnesota is also hurting with a few big names out of the line up and hopefully will be ripe for the picking tonight

This is the first of 3 meetings between the two teams this season, something that is nice seeing as Oilers v Wild games tend to be of the sleep inducing type.

Last Games:

Edmonton: The Oilers put up a stinker Tuesday night against the Dallas Stars on the wrong end of a 5-2 score. The first period started out nasty as ex-Oiler Eric Cole scored for the Stars just 14 seconds into the game. It didn’t get any better from there, after 10 minutes of the first frame the Stars had mustered a 3-1 lead.

The second frame started quick for the Stars as well, Cody Eakin potted a goal just 1:10 in. The Oil outchanced the Stars the rest of the second period and those chances led to a goal by Sam Gagner, who got his 6^th of the season from Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

The Third period was much of the same and say the Oilers continue to press, but they couldn’t manage to get the puck by Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen. Trevor Daley put the game away for Dallas with an empty net goal.

It wasn’t a great effort from the Oilers but they did manage to out-chance the Stars, but not enough sustained pressure and the defensive lapses we’ve gotten used to once again cost the Oilers the game.

Minnesota: The Oilers aren’t the only team that put up a stinker in their last game as the Wild lost on Tuesday night 3-0 to the Ottawa Senators. The Wild were outshot 32-27 in the game but the first period say a lopsided 15-3 shot advantage for the pesky Sens, who came away with a 1-0 lead.

There was no scoring in the second period as the Wild tried to make a push to even things up but couldn’t get the puck by Senators goalie Robin Lehner. In the third period the Wild continued to push but the Senators countered with goals from Eric Condra and Kyle Turris to secure the victory.

Last Meeting:

We have to go back to last season for when these two teams last met, the NHL division re-alignment has moved the Wild into the Central division and thankfully we no longer have to watch these teams play 5-6 times a year. Zzzzz.

Ok, I take that back. The last meeting between these two was not a stinker for us Oilers fans, as the Oilers walked into the xCel Energy center and score six goals in the first two periods for a convincing 6-1 win.

The first period of that game saw the Oilers chase goalie Nick Backstrom after two goals from Cory Potter, What? No yeah two goals from Cory Potter and another from Taylor Hall, on just five shots.

Josh Harding didn’t fare much better allowing 3 goals in the second, two from Nail Yakupov and another from Jordan Eberle.

The score may have been lopsided in this game, but would you know it the Wild outshot the Oil 39-17 in the game, but Nikolai Khabibulin was outstanding, only allowing one goal and making some outstanding stops in the third period before finally letting one get by him off the stick of Wild forward Miko Koivu.

Players To Watch:

Edmonton: Well this one is easy, new goalie Ben Scrivens will be the player I, and everyone else is going to be keeping an eye on tonight. It will be interesting to see what the “Professor” can do when he doesn’t have the Kings defense playing in front of him.

The Other new comer Matt Hendricks will be playing tonight as well, he’ll be wearing number 23 for those of you wondering. We can expect to see Hendricks on the PK tonight and 5v5 he’ll see a bottom six role.

Minnesota: The Wild, as mentioned above, have been bitten by the injury bug. They currently have Parise, Koivu, Josh Harding, and Edmontonian Jered Spurgeon. But there are still some interesting players to watch. If you’d like to boo at your TV tonight, Dany Heatley will be playing on the first line with Charlie Coyle, whom I really like. Minnesota’s second line also features Nino Niederreiter and center Michael Granlund.

The Lines:

Edmonton Oilers Lines:

Taylor Hall – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Sam Gagner

Nail Yakupov – Mark Arcobello – Jordan Eberle

David Perron – Boyd Gordon – Ryan Jones/Matt Hendricks

Luke Gazdic – Matt Hendricks/Ryan Smyth –Ryan Jones

Andrew Ference – Justin Schultz

Martin Marincin – Jeff Petry

Nick Schultz – Anton Belov

Ben Scrivens

Minnesota’s Lines:

Heatley-Coyle-Zucker

Niederreiter-Granlund-Pominville

Cooke-Brodziak-Fontaine

Mitchell-Haula-Veilleux

Suter-Brodin

Scandella-Prosser

Stoner-Ballard

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