Oilers Preseason Gameday – vs. Kings

The Oilers take on the Kings tonight in Vernon B.C. as part of the Kraft Hockeyville celebrations. Both teams are entering the game with a 2-2-0 record in the pre-season so far. The Oilers will ice their deepest forward unit of the pre-season so far, while the D-pairings are made up of mostly guys fighting for the 6-7 spots.

Yesterday, the Oilers assigned Jujhar Khaira, Mitch Moroz, Eetu Laurikainen, and Joey LaLeggia to the AHL, and placed David Musil and Taylor Beck on waivers for assignment to Bakersfield.

Laurent Broissoit will get the start in goal today.

The Line-up:

Oilers

Lucic – McDavid – Eberle
Pouliot – Nugent-Hopkins – Puljujarvi
Versteeg – Caggiula – Yakupov
Slepyshev – Lander – Pakarinen

Nurse – Davidson
Oesterle – Benning
Fraser – Gryba

Brossoit
Gustavsson

Kings:

Pearson – Carter – Toffoli
Clifford – Dowd – Mersch
King – Lewis – Purcell
Bjorkstrand – Crescenzi – Bissonnette

Forbort – Greene
McNabb – Ladue
Gravel – Gilbert

Zatkoff

Players to Watch:

Edmonton

This will be the first game McDavid and Nugent-Hopkins will play together, and the remaining two centre options are actually also very competent. Drake Caggiula gets another opportunity to make his case to stick around the NHL. It will be an interesting decision by the management, but with Versteeg playing well, Draisaitl will be slotted in as the third line centre. Slepyshev will most likely be included within the next round of the cuts, and Lander and Pakarinen will be fighting with Pitlick for a spot on the team, neither player can afford a poor effort.

On Defence, the spot for a 7^th defender remains open and it will likely be filled by Gryba or Oesterle, so needless to say this game is huge for both of them. Benning also has an outside shot and will need to have a monster game.

Los Angeles

The Kings are playing a split squad game, with half their team playing in Anaheim tonight. The main three to watch will be the Pearson-Carter-Toffoli line. Former Oilers Tom Gilbert, and Teddy Purcell both signed cheap contract over the summer and will be nice additions to the team. Fun fact: Gilbert leads the Kings with 4 pre-season points so far.

Prediction:

The Oilers have a very deep top 9 playing in this game while the Kings main defencemen and essentially their top line is out of the game. The Oilers defence isn’t so hot in this game, but they should be able to pull out a win. I’ll take a 4-2 Edmonton win.