Oilers Gameday - vs Vancouver

The Oilers are back in action at Rexall tonight, this time against the Vancouver Canucks. With only 9 games left in the season, it’s very strange that the Canucks and Oilers meet 3 times before April 9. (And if you miss this game, we get to see the Canucks back in Edmonton on April 6th, for the last-ever Oilers game at Rexall Place.)

This is the fourth of a five-game homestand for the Oilers, in which they are 1-2 so far.

Last Game

Wednesday night, against St Louis (of all teams), the Oilers pulled out a win. I say pulled out because it was 5-2 and then it was 5-4 with about 1:30 left in the third and somehow, magically, the Oilers got the empty-net goal instead of letting the Blues tie it up and then getting the win in OT (as was expected, for sure). The power play was hot fire on Wednesday, going 4/6 after having been 1/32 in the previous however many games. If I was Jay Woodcroft, however, I’d probably be a little annoyed that the Oilers didn’t score on the 5 minute powerplay they had in the 3rd period. It sounded solid, but 5 minutes is a long time to not capitalize.

Taylor “King of my heart and everything” Hall scored this goal, which distracted me at pub trivia night to the point that I needed someone else to write down answers.

ICYMI, @hallsy04‘s team-leading 23rd. #STLvsEDM https://t.co/kKIUYLGyo9

— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) March 17, 2016

Keys to the Game

Set off the fire alarm during pregame naptime at the Westin, where the Canucks are staying.
I think if the Oilers go out there and play like they did to get ot 5-2 against St Louis, they’ll be fine. Of course, it never works out that way, but a girl can dream.
Keep the powerplay rolling. 4/6 is great. Unsustainable, but great.
Like Kelsey said last game, just go out and have fun. It LOOKED like they had fun on Wednesday, and they won. Coincidence? Probably, but maybe if they keep having fun they’ll do more winning.

Players to Watch

I like Taylor Hall. You all know this, and I’m not ashamed of how much I like him, either.

I know his production has slipped of late (he’s down around 0.8 ppg instead of the 1.1 he was rolling earlier in the season), but he’s still a difference-maker on the ice. And he’s still fun to watch. Nail Yakupov might skate like he’s being chased by bees, but Taylor Hall skates like the wind. I forget sometimes how fast he actually is, until he shows us. So watch him, and just enjoy. It’s fun.

Projected Lineups

Edmonton

I copied these from last game. I know nothing.

Patrick Maroon – Connor McDavid – Jordan Eberle

Taylor Hall – Leon Draisaitl – Iiro Pakarinen

Lauri Korpikoski – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Nail Yakupov

Matt Hendricks – Mark Letestu – Zack Kassian

Andrej Sekera – Mark Fayne

Darnell Nurse – Adam Clendening

Griffin Reinhart – Jordan Oesterle

Cam Tal-Bot

Vancouver

Daniel Sedin – Henrik Sedin – Jake Virtanen

Sven Baertschi – Bo Horvat – Radim Vrbata

Brendan Gaunce – Linden Vey – Alexandre Grenier

Alexandre Burrows – Jared McCann – Emerson Etem

Ben Hutton – Chris Tanev

Nikita Tryamkin – Dan Hamhuis

Matt Bartkowski – Alex Biega

Ryan “Oiler Killer” Miller

Final Thoughts

Someone asked me if it was hard writing these gameday posts. The short answer is “no”. I mean, it’s not tough to put together some thoughts about the Oilers, talk about Taylor Hall a bit, search up lineups, try and remember what happened last game, and do all the formatting things I need to do. (There was a post in January that took me approximately 18 minutes, start to finish.)

The longer answer is a little more complicated.

When the team was winning (in December, during that 6-game streak), these posts were easy. It was fun to do a game recap because the games were fun to watch. I liked looking for highlights because they made me remember that yes, the Oilers actually won a game (or two, or three). There was a lot of really positive buzz surrounding the team – on TV, on Twitter, in actual live conversations – and it was easy to carry that conversation into some long-winded gameday previews.

Today, with 9 days left in the season, it’s not nearly as easy to write this post. Sure, the Oilers won last game, but there are only so many words I can dump about how the penalty kill isn’t great, or how it’d be nice if Hall could pick it up a little, or how it’d be even better if the D wasn’t held together with duct tape.

And even though no one asked, here’s the process I go through nearly every game day:

Remember it’s game day (usually on the way to work) and wish someone else was writing the post
Look up the opponent and start time. Rejoice when it’s 7pm or later and swear loudly when it’s 5pm.
Get to work, open a document and mash out a bunch of words about how much I hate the Oilers, just to get that out of my system
Go on Twitter and watch the world burn for a while. (Today, for example, was more Taylor Hall trade talk.)
Teach my classes and jot down ideas for things to write about as that’s happening.
Wonder if I can surpass 800 words.
Look up lineups at lunch – Twitter is usually pretty useful for that.
Get mad at Matt Henderson when he posts his preview before I’ve even started mine.
Write the bulk of the post over my 44 minute lunch “hour”
Look up pictures of Taylor Hall for the header image (my image search history is a lot of “Taylor Hall (team name)”
Click through pictures of Taylor Hall until I find one I like, and then get mad when it’s from Getty images.
Finally settle on a picture of Taylor Hall.
Add tags to the post, spell at least one of them wrong.
Look at the word count and fistpump when I DO surpass 800. Double fist-pump when I hit 1000.
Hit “post” and realize that I forgot to upload the picture of Taylor Hall. Fix that.
Read it over and realize there’s a spelling mistake in the first paragraph, and try to change it before anyone notices.
Text the link to my dad and see if he notices the subtle shoutout to him (not in all posts, but most of them).
Wait for comments (which never come).
Laugh at Alex when he tweets about my post and makes it sound official.