The Edmonton Oilers have 5 games remaining and 2 of them are against the Canucks. Tonight’s match up against Vancouver will set up the final match of the season on April 7th. We are in the home stretch. Edmonton, despite getting thoroughly destroyed against Columbus, has played a somewhat respectable stretch of hockey over the final segment of this lost season. The Canucks, however, are in a nose dive.
For what it’s worth to Canucks fans, Edmonton has been in your position. The Canucks are at the bottom of the Western Conference and hopelessly injured. All their best players are bothered by some kind of injury or getting long in the tooth. The General Manager traded away a 50+ point player (who has 13 points in 14 games with his new team) for Jussi Jokinen and 4th line tweener.
Seriously, Canucks fans, we can sympathize. I mean, we won’t. But we could if we wanted.
Edmonton can scarcely gloat, but it’s fun to do anyway. Edmonton’s nightmare season has been crushing for this club. Everybody (except McDavid) has been questioned and that goes from ownership to Management to Coaching staff to the players down to the Rogers Place food vendors.
We have heard the rumours that Darryl Katz was ready to clean house in January but was talked down by Gretzky and company. The addition of Paul Coffey to the coaching staff was clearly some kind of middle ground. It’s not sure what he’s actually there to do. You can be sure Gretz is aware of everything that Coffey sees.
The team is increasing ticket prices 5% despite missing the playoffs for the 11th of 12 years. They own the arena, they make money hand over fist compared to their prior agreement (and they were profitable before). The club is clawing greedily at the pocketbooks of Oiler fans who have faithfully shelled out thousands and thousands of dollars every single season only to see the team conserve cap space and downgrade talent.
Anecdotally, I have heard more and more about fans not renewing their season tickets. It’s a fate that is well earned by the Oilers. Everyone has a breaking point. Peter Chiarelli might have finally found it in Canada’s most forgiving market. They aren’t in a dire situation and I doubt they ever will be, but maybe this season and the fallout from it wakes up Katz. He’s spent his whole life building a powerful business but he runs the Oilers like it’s a toy whose only role in his life is to bring his 80’s heroes together.
LINEUP
RNH McDavid Rattie Caggiula Draisiatl Aberg Lucic Strome Puljujarvi Slepyshev Khaira Kassian
Nurse Larsson Sekera Benning Russell Bear
Talbot
LINEUP
1) McPoints. The Oilers season is down to basically one thing: Getting Connor McDavid as many points as possible. That’s it. It might be vain and a bit arbitrary, but what else is there for this team to rally around? Connor McDavid is out to prove he’s the best player in the world and its most lethal scorer. He is 5 goals away from the goal scoring leader and 6 points up on Nikita Kucherov in the scoring race. He has 18 more even strength points than the 2nd leading player in the league (MacKinnon). That’s the same difference between 2nd place and 46th. McDavid is a freak of nature.
2) Giving Up On The Power Play. Todd McLellan has basically given up trying this whole “Power Play thing…. The Head Coach has abandoned the 4F-1D strategy and is simply going to play a forward line with 2 defenders when the other team finds themselves in the box. This is because they’ve tried nothing and it didn’t work. They tried playing Lucic on the top PP. That didn’t work. They’ve tried playing Caggiula on the top PP. That didn’t work. They’ve tried Strome on the top PP. That didn’t work. They’ve put every struggling player on the PP and for some reason the PP didn’t suddenly start getting better. WEIRD.
3) Still Sedins. With everyone on the Canucks either traded, dead, or dying there it is incredible that the Sedins have managed to stay relatively healthy this year. No forward on the Canucks has played more games for them this season than the duo of Henrik and Daniel Sedin. As a result they still sit 2nd and 3rd in team scoring. Not bad for 37 year olds in the NHL. The twins are down to roughly 15 and a half minutes a game this year, which means their offensive production is still pretty solid on a per 60 basis. And on the PP they are still pretty lethal. Oiler fans have been watching the Sedins rack up PP points against them forever.
Puck drops tonight at 8PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet One. Game On!
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