Oilers Gameday vs Boston: Hope Is A Dangerous Thing

Fresh off winning(!) an afternoon game(!) in Denver(!) on Sunday, the Oilers take the ice tonight playing host to the Bruins for the only time this season.

Since the Oilers beat the Bruins in November, Boston has gone 26-5-4. In that same time, the Oilers are 15-17-2. It’s safe to say that one of the two teams in tonight’s tilt will make the playoffs, and it isn’t the Oilers.

Keys to the Game

Edmonton

• Score the first goal. The Oilers have allowed a goal on the first shot against 10 times this season, and another 11 goals within the first 6 shots. They haven’t lost all of those games, but they certainly haven’t won many that way. It’s like playing from the blue tees when you should be playing from the whites.
• Stay out of the penalty box. The Oilers aren’t good at killing penalties (especially at home), and so if they don’t take them, they can’t get scored on.

Boston

• Score the first goal. It’s been a good strategy against the Oilers so far this season.
• Force the Oilers to take penalties. The home PK is all-time bad, and somehow hasn’t (can’t?) improve. it’s an easy solution for a team.

Players to Watch

Edmonton

• Connor. His hatty on Sunday was crazy exciting.

Boston

• Patrice Bergeron might be the most valuable player in the NHL at any given time. He gets a lot of press that says “Bergeron is so underrated”, which means he’s not that underrated, but my goodness what a delight to watch.

Projected Lineups

Edmonton

Patrick Maroon – Connor McDavid – Drake Caggiula

Milan Lucic – Leon Draisaitl – Mike Cammalleri

Jujhar Khaira – Ryan Strome – Anton Slepyshev

Jesse Puljujarvi -Mark Letestu – Zack Kassian

Oscar Klefbom – Kris Russell

Darnell Nurse – Adam Larsson

Brandon Davidson – MattBenning

Cam Talbot

Boston

Brad Marchand – Patrice bergeron – David Pastrnak

Jake Debrusk – David Kreijci – Ryan Spooner

Danton Heinen – Riley Nash – David Backes

Tim Schaller – Sean Kuraly – Noel Acciari

Zdeno Chara – Charlie McAvoy

Torey Krug – Brandon Carlo

Matt Grzelcyk – Adam McQuaid

Tuukka Rask

Notes

With fewer than 25 games left, the season is all but done. It’s reminiscent of the Decade of Darkness, where they’re not officially eliminated from playoff contention but they’re eliminated from playoff contention.

With the trade deadline around the corner, it’s not hard to imagine that the roster for next Tuesday’s game against the Sharks will look very different to the lineup they’re icing today.