Edmonton Oilers Talk: McHatty Strikes Again!

This is your TL/DR (too long, didn’t read) summary post where excerpts are taken from the best of the best when it comes to Edmonton Oilers blogs. BLH gives you his two cents on the latest posts being published in the Oilogosphere! Including those from Lowetide.ca, The Athletic, Oilersnation, The Cult of Hockey, Copper N Blue, Oil on Whyte, and more!

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Cult of Hockey

Player grades: McDavid leads way with hat trick as Oilers quench Flames 5-2

#5 Cody Ceci, 7. For the second game in a row he sprung a teammate for a breakaway with a lovely stretch pass, this time earning an assist when Puljujarvi buried the chance.
#22 Tyson Barrie, 4. Played chase for much of the night and was absolutely demolished in all shot shares, e.g. 7 shots for, 18 against in 17 minutes at 5v5.
#10 Derek Ryan, 7. His line had a solid game at even strength, and he also chipped in 3:27 on the penalty kill to lead Edmonton forwards.
#42 Brendan Perlini, 4. Played just 6:22 with little impact. 1 shot.
#13 Jesse Puljujarvi, 8. Got an assist on the powerplay, scored a goal at even strength, and added another helper on the empty netter… He seems to love the Battle of Alberta, having played a number of strong games vs. the Flames last season.
#29 Leon Draisaitl, 8. Terrific from the outset, bringing a determined two-way game and absorbing a little abuse in the process.
#37 Warren Foegele, 7. His power move in tight to the net set the stage for the Ryan goal, earning Foegele his first point as an Oiler.
#41 Mike Smith, 9. Made 9 stops off of Matthew Tkachuk alone, as the Flames linchpin was at his pestering best on this night… Little chance on either goal, each of which was scored by an unchecked Flame in the low slot. 47 shots, 45 saves, .957 save percentage.
#97 Connor McDavid, 9. Fired 8 shots on net and converted 3 of them into goals. His tenth career hat trick and already his third against the Flames, a rival he loves to torment.

BLH’s Thoughts: Jesse Puljujarvi is tied for 8th in league scoring after two games… My preseason prediction of 40pts might get blown out of the water… Is this guy going to put up 80?

Fack! It’s only been two games, BLH! Drew Doughty is sitting in second place on the scoring charts… Let’s allow things to settle down a bit before anointing Pulju the next Jari Kurri!

So Duncan Keith and Cody Ceci had themselves another decent game, reckon we’ll get another warning from the analytics community not to get too excited over small sample sizes?

That hat-trick from McDavid was the weirdest hatty, wasn’t it? I mean, when he got that open-netter and the commentator announced that was Connor’s third, I was kinda shocked that he’d scored three. What happened was that I’d totally forgotten 97’s first goal, the one that Pulju fluffed on that conveniently bounced right to the Oilers captain for a tap-in (more or less).

https://twitter.com/SportsnetSpec/status/1449587198597099522

Sportsnet

Early Oilers results have fans believing this season could be different

What’s up in Edmonton?… There is so much more talent below the big line in Edmonton these days, and when Tippett went to three lines with the score 4-2 in the third period, it was a workflow that we haven’t seen here for ages.
For years Edmonton has iced a first line, with two third lines and a fourth line. Then they split McDavid and Draisaitl up last year, and they had a first line, a second line, and two fourth lines.
The Oilers are still taking too many penalties, and but for a few breaks, Calgary could have found a better fate Saturday.
Duncan Keith and Cody Ceci were impeccable Saturday, a pairing that appears destined to silence the detractors who want to write players off before they’ve even played a game for their team. They were excellent Saturday.
Evan Bouchard is being worked in on the third pairing, like a young defenceman is supposed to.
Mike Smith has been the better goalie in each of the first two games, making 45 stops Saturday. We’re not saying he’s the best goalie in the Pacific, but he was a shade better than Thatcher Demko in Game 1, and out-duelled Jacob Markstrom in Game 2.
It’s only two games, but at this point, there’s no reason not to believe.

BLH’s Thoughts: Man, does Evan Bouchard play a quiet game or what? That’s another match where he was a ninja assassin from the 3rd pair because I noticed him even less against Calgary than I did in the Vancouver game. That’s not a bad thing either.

What do you think about the goaltending so far? Mike Smith continues to defy the algorithms…

How about that fourth line? You can tell Tippett doesn’t really want to play that trio, eh? I feel for Perlini because he’s got the tools to play up the lineup whereas McLeod and Turris have failed to do anything of note in their ten or eleven minutes of ice-time so far in this young season.

Oilersnation

GDB 2.0 Wrap Up: McDavid hat trick leads Oilers to 5-2 victory over the Flames

I wanted to see an early goal to set the tone but what we actually got was an Oilers team that looked sloppy and tentative for the first 10 minutes or so. I’d even say that Edmonton was lucky to make it out of the first half of that frame unscathed, and the fact that they wrapped up the frame with a lead was almost a gift.
Led by Mike Smith’s stellar play between the pipes, the Oilers were able to bend without breaking and managed to close out a big win in a game that was anything but perfect.
Smith finished the night with 43 saves and a .956 save%.
Normally, it’s the Oilers that have their ex-players scoring on them so it was nice to have the tides turn with Ryan getting on the board against his former club.
Only 26 seconds after the Flames made it a 3-2 game, Jesse Puljujarvi took a pass from Cody Ceci in full flight and zipped a quick wrister past Markstrom on the blocker side to restore the two-goal lead (4-2).
Zack Kassian made his return to the lineup and had what I thought was a very strong night against a Calgary Flames team that despises him… he did a very good job of being annoying which is all we ever really want him to do.
The powerplay remained hot as the Oilers were able to score two goals on four chances with the man advantage.
Rasmus Andersson had better be getting a call from the NHL Department of Player Safety after his bullshit head butt on Yamamoto in the first period.
I don’t like seeing the Oilers get outshot by a 47 to 33 margin regardless of the results.

BLH’s Thoughts: Well, Darryl Sutter won one thing last night, the shot share. At one point in the third period I thought the two teams were playing in Calgary when I looked at the shot counter. The Flames never really took control of that match for any worthwhile stretch of time, how the hell did they manage to get 47 shots on Smith?

Rasmus Andersson doing Rasmus Andersson-type things… Man, that guy never learns, but it’ll come back to him at some point.

Is there anybody in the league that could take down Nikita Zadorov with an open-ice body check? Oilers were bouncing off of him all night long and he nearly broke Kassian in half at the Flames bench after Kass smoked Monahan behind Calgary’s net.

If Andrew Mangiapane was in the Movie “Casino”, he’d play the Joe Pesci character. Did you see him feeding Darnell Nurse punches in front of Calgary’s net after Darnell did a fly-by and caught Noah Hanifin? Mangiapane gives zero shits as to the size of his opponent and it’s quite humorous I find.

At no point in that game did I feel nervous that the Oilers were going to lose or cough up the lead. That tells me that this team has something special going on early this year.

Now, with that said, on the 22nd Edmonton plays Vegas and on the 27th, they play the Flyers. Those two teams should be tougher competition and if the Oilers swat them aside like they did with Vancouver and Calgary, that’ll further solidify my feelings about the team.