If that was a glimpse into our Petryless future then I'm not overly keen on seeing what the last 20ish games of the year will be like. Except for the duo of Yak and Roy, who plan to take their Tiger show to Vegas this summer, the team had no life at all. Credit where it's due to the Wild for choking all the fun out of sport, but that was a terrible effort from the Oil.
It wasn't just that Petry was gone. Obviously Hall's absence forces Purcell into scoring chances he can never seem to deliver on and Lander's shoulder injury further complicated things in the bottom 6. The lineup looked like it was gassed and overmatched.
In terms of shot attempts, the Oil kept things pretty close until the halfway mark in the game and then things just fell apart. In terms of actual shots on net and goals, this was a blowout. They managed just 5 shots in each frame and allowed 29 against.
You can't fault the goaltender in a shutout loss, but Scrivens wasn't great either. He turned in another sub-.900 effort fuelled by some poor rebound control. The first goal he had no chance on with a filthy tip-in, but the 2nd he kicked out a juicy rebound to the slot that found its way onto a Wild stick. Woof.
MANSON
Yesterday Jim Matheson was talking about a possible target in a Jeff Petry trade and he threw out a name that immediately made me roll my eyes in Josh Manson of the Anaheim Ducks. Matheson said that MacT coveted the big 6'3" 217 pound son of former Oiler Dave Manson and I immediately assumed Nepotism at its finest again. As if the Oilers weren't already collecting legacy prospects enough as it is. We already have Musil and Simpson. Why not add another? (He said, dripping with sarcasm)
I was wrong to assume that.
Although his NHL career has been a very brief 20 games, this 23 year old right shooting Defenseman has performed very well with the Ducks. This is his 1st full season as a pro and he's split it between the NHL and the AHL. He played 18 games early in the season and was recalled recently by the Ducks.
His game isn't about Offense, he scored just 6 goals in 99 College games, so we need to temper expectations there, but he has been a fantastic possession player to date. His raw Corsi For Percentage is 56.4% which is the highest on the entire Ducks squad. That translates into a whopping 6.1% Corsi For Relative to his teammates.
His Corsi Percentage is driven largely by the fact that his shot attempts against is the lowest on the entire team. That is to say that when he's on the ice the other team is generating just 47.81/60 attempts against the Ducks. Nobody else on the team is even in the 40's. It looks like he is shutting the opposition down.
Boudreau isn't loading him up with prime offensive zone starts either, just 31.3% but he is feeding the big kid a lot of Neutral zone starts. It's keeping the kid out of trouble and he's succeeding in those conditions.
If we assume that a Petry trade is a foregone conclusion and the proposed returns a 2nd round pick, then I would take Josh Manson over that every day of the week. Not only is this kid checking off all the boxes for traditionalists (size, pedigree, right shooter) but he's also killing it in the fancies and he's just a 1st year pro. I have no idea if that deal is close or even possible, but sometimes Matheson floats ideas out there that he knows has at least a little bit of traction.
LINEUP
Ugh. We think Oesterle should be available to play tonight so he could be getting his chance to shine on the National stage. Beyond that there's not much that can change. What I will do is list the line that I would play and we'll go from there. Scrivens wasn't good last night, I wonder if Bachman finds his way in net.
Pouliot RNH Eberle Hamilton Roy Yak Gazdic Gordon Klinkhammer Fraser Hendricks Pakarinen
Ference Oesterle Klefbom Schultz Marincin Fayne
Bachman
OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME
1) Just Like Last Night, But Completely Different. That was so incredibly bad and joyless that it should be used as a means of getting ADHD kids to calm down during class. Just cue up that game and little Dakota Knox Huntyr will sit down, shut up, and learn his fractions in peace. So if the plan isn't to lull the paying fans into chemically suppressed mental state then they should be less of whatever the heck that was last night.
2) Shelter Klef. The kid is good. He has established that his skills are there, but he's not ready to go into the deep end all by himself yet. He was getting exposed last night from a possession standpoint posting a miserable 37%. He also picked up a few minuses in the traditional +/- if that's your bag. That said, he was still giving flashes of the player he might develop into. He has a sublime skating ability and his stick is a useful tool at both ends of the ice for him. Find him safer minutes and reap the rewards.
3) The Nelson Effect. During this upswing there have been bad games, but they've been followed up by better efforts. Under Eakins those bad games were strung together and created streaks of ineptitude. The last quarter of the season will be against tough competition and Nelson needs to prove that he can get the team to pull in the right direction if he wants to lose the interim tag.
Puck drops at 5:08 PM on Sportsnet One. Tank On!
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