Oilers Gameday – vs Minnesota

After a 3-2 OT win last night, the Oilers are back in action tonight, hosting Devan Dubnyk and the Minnesota Wild.

While the Oilers came away with the win last night, they still have some work to do in making certain that they keep their opponents out of it.

The Wild come to town with a record of 11-8-4, and are coming off a day’s rest. They lost 3-2 in a shootout in Calgary on Friday.

Keys to the Game

Edmonton

• Forget it’s Sunday. So far this season, the Oilers are 0-4 in Sunday home games; hopefully the y buck this trend today.
• Ignore that they played last night. While the game against the Ducks wasn’t terribly rough, there’s still a fatigue element to consider.
• Remember that Talbot is on the bench. WIth Jonas Gustavsson getting the start today, the Oilers may not be able to depend on their goaltender to bail them out the way Cam Talbot can.

Minnesota

• Get the puck through to the net – it’ll probably go in.
• Key in on Connor’s linemates – Lucic is slow like molasses and could be easily taken out of the play.
• Draw the Oilers defence off the puck and into the corner. As we’ve seen many times, the guy who gets left alone in the slot often puts the puck in the net. Like this:
  

  .@ebs_14 pic.twitter.com/3TiavIelpq

  — Jeanshorts (@JSBMjeanshorts) November 27, 2016

   

Players to Watch

Edmonton

Is there anyone to watch other than Connor? I mean, the kid is otherworldly good.

Actually, there is. Drake Caggiula scored his first NHL goal last night, and he was jsut so happy. Heck of a signing by Chiarelli; I wasn’t sure if he was read for teh jump the NHL, but I think he’s proving me wrong.

Anaheim

Charlie Coyle. I admittedly don’t watch the Wild unless they’re playing the Oilers, but a friend of mine is a big Wild fan, and he’s big on Coyle, so I’ll say him.

Obviously, watch Dubnyk. Chances are he’s going to have an all-world game against the Oilers, because of course he is.

Lineups

Edmonton

Milan Lucic – Connor McDavid – Leon Draisaitl

Benoit Pouliot – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Jordan Eberle

Anton Slepyshev – Drake Caggiula – Lance Tyler Pitlick

Patrick Maroon – Mark Letestu – Zack Kassian

Andrej Sekera – Matt Benning

Kris Russell – Adam Larsson

Oscar Klefbom – Mark Fayne

Jonas Gustavsson

Anaheim

Zach Parise – Eric Staal – Charlie Coyle

Jason Zucker – Mikko Koivu – Mikael Granlund

Nino Niederreiter – Erik Haula – Jason Pominville

Tyler Graovac – Zack Mitchell – Chris Stewart

Ryan Suter – Jared Spurgeon

Jonas Brodin – Mathew Duba

Marco Scandella – Nate Prosser

Devan Dubnyk

Notes

After tonight, the Oilers are off for a 3 game trip (Buffalo, Philadelphia, Minnesota), and it’d be really nice if they could get a win tonight to give themselves a bit of a buffer.

Connor McDavid was held pointless last night, so he’s probably going to score a hat trick.

OILERS RIG LIVE4MS

Our 4th annual fundraiser for the MS Society of Alberta is set for January 21, 2017 at The Pint Downtown, at 6:30pm

It’s a Battle of Alberta on HNIC, with the Oilers in Calgary. Puck drop is 8:00pm.

We’ll have a great lineup of silent auction items, as well as raffles throughout the night. We might even have tshirts for sale (but we’ll let you know as we get closer to the date).

All proceeds from the fundraiser go to the MS Society of Alberta.

See you there!