Oilers Gameday vs Rangers: Limping into Last?

The Oilers’ 5 game homestand continues tonight with a visit from the New York Rangers, who played in Calgary last night and should lose but probably won’t.

These teams are both on the outside looking in, and the Oilers are looking at a year in which their best month has a record of 7-5-1.

This season truly can’t be finished soon enough.

Keys to the Game

Edmonton

• Score first. Score often. Keep the puck with Connor or Leon because there’s not much else to hope for.
• Stay out of the box and try not to force the Rangers to take penalties either. The home penalty kill is still real bad, and the power play isn’t much better.

New York

• Force the Oilers to take penalties. It’s a strategy that has worked for most other teams in the league this season.
• Honestly, keep the Oilers to the perimeter. They can’t seem to get too many pucks through from the outside, so it’s easy to defend.

Players to Watch

Edmonton

• Pontus Aberg scored his first point as an Oiler in his first game. There’s upside to that acquisition, so hopefully management gets a chance to see what he’s capable of over this last stretch.

New York

• Rick Nash
• Ryan McDonagh

Projected Lineups

Edmonton

Milan Lucic – Connor McDavid – Anton Slepyshev

Mike Cammalleri – Leon Draisaitl – Ty Rattie

Pontus Aberg – Ryan Strome – Jesse Puljujarvi

Drake Caggiula – Jujhar Khaira – Iiro Pakarinen

Darnell Nurse – Kris Russell (?)

Oscar Klefbom – Matt Benning

Andrej Sekera – Ethan Bear

Cam Talbot

Nashville

Chris Kreider – Mika Zibanejad – Pavel Buchnevich

Jimmy Vesey – Vladislav Namestnikov – Mats Zuccarello

Ryan Spooner – Kevin Hayes – Jesper Fast

Paul Carey – Peter Holland – Cody McLeod

Brady Skjei – Neal Pionk

Marc Staal – Rob O’Gara

John Gilmour – Anthony DeAngelo

Hebron Lundqvist (?)

Notes

There’s an infinitesimal chance the Oilers make the playoffs, but that involves winning every game in regulation, and that doesn’t seem likely.

Instead, it’s time to look to the future, and folks, it isn’t pretty. After Tuesday’s game where Matt Benning took a cross check into the boards from Evander Kane, and no one other than Benning jumped to defend him, there seems to be a consensus that certain players get a lot more latitude with respect to ice time vs production.

It’s uncertain whether or not anything will change with regards to deployment, but with the season all but lost it can’t hurt to mix things up a little bit.

There are 6 million reasons why some players will never be healthy-scratched. By the same token there are 31 reasons why they should.