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: Edmonton Oilers comeback streak comes to end against Ottawa Senators
- Duncan Keith, 7. Solid game, fairly low event, gave up little on defence. He won the puck, then set up Drai for a dangerous break in OT.
- Derek Ryan, 7. He made a great pass to set up Darnell Nurse on Edmonton’s second goal. Coming at such a key moment, that bumps up his score two full grades.
- Warren Foegele, 7. Took an early penalty on a hook in n-zone. He almost jammed in a goal going hard to net late in the third. He threw five hits.
- Leon Draisaitl, 7. High event game, with some major mistakes on defence, but brilliant offensive thrusts. Nine major contributions to Grade A shots for.
- Jesse Puljujarvi, 4. Failed to drain the shot on a wide open 5-alarm shot early in first. He’s 13 games without a goal and that’s as close as he came in this one. Needs to do more.
- Zack Kassian, 4 . Made little impression. Just one hit.
- William Lagesson, 4. He made three major mistakes on Grade A shots against, too high event for a bottom-pairing d-man.
- Mikko Koskinen, 5. A weird game, with much good but some bad, bad moments at key times, such as the game’s first and last goals.
BLH’s Thoughts: Evander Kane was graded a 5, but I thought he brought much more to the game against Ottawa than in his debut vs. Montreal. He was in the muck a tad more, he was faster and got a few real good shots off later in the match.
Jesus, until I read these grades, Kassian didn’t even register as a guy who was even in the game for me.
Foegele has had some real jump in his game this week since being thrown up with Leon and Jesse. If the Oilers make the playoffs, he’s going to be a real catalyst out there. Although, he looks to be the kinda guy who gets caught up in the emotions of a shift and might find himself in trouble from time to time because he’s overcommitted to a body check.
Speaking of Leon, when’s the last time we saw that one-timer of his and why the hell does he keep button hooking 10 feet into the o-zone only to lose puck possession? Connor’s not on his line anymore, so that little dink pass has nowhere to go but to the other team…
I’m concerned for my boy, Pulju. His role on the second line doesn’t seem to be panning out. It breaks my heart to say, but he’s bobbling pucks and the plays are dying on his stick a bit. Maybe he should go back to Connor’s line or down with Nuge and Hyman on the 3rd line because he’s had some success with both of those guys in the past.
Perhaps Dylan Holloway IS the key to this lineup (no pressure). They could bring him up and slide Hyman over to the right side, right?
More pertinent to last night’s game, in the OT, did you feel like Edmonton’s players couldn’t get off the ice or wouldn’t? I mean, Nurse played over half of that extra frame and I’m going to say that his fatigue partly played in why Stutzle was able to get that shot off and over Koskinen’s shoulder.
Sportsnet
Oilers should jump on opportunity to roll every line following Kane addition
- The knock on this group of Oiler forwards is that it isn’t deep enough, and it may not be. But we would ask, how can you tell, when the bottom third plays so little?
- The players, they know. And not only are McDavid and Draisaitl happy to see a shift that could make this team more of a playoff team, perhaps with a couple less minutes of ice time they’ll be more formidable once they’re on the ice.
- Adding Kane allowed Tippett to redistribute Nugent-Hopkins and Hyman to their own third line. Maybe if Dylan Holloway comes up around April 1, it pushes Hyman to the right side, Holloway to Nugent-Hopkins’ left, and Kassian to the fourth line with some combination of Devin Shore, Ryan McLeod and Ryan.
- The rest of the league also knows that Edmonton leans way too hard on their two stars because they don’t have enough talent underneath them in the lineup. Now, we would say, there is enough talent underneath to play four lines longer into a game.
BLH’s Thoughts: As we spoke above, Holloway might be the key to this lineup and you have to wonder if that’s what the organization was thinking all summer.
Personally, I’d like to see these lines up front by the time March rolls around,
- Kane-McDavid-Puljujarvi
- Foegele-Draisaitl-Hyman
- Holloway-RNH-Yamamoto
- Shore-McLeod-Kassian
You might be miffed as to why I’d take Shore over Benson or Perlini and I’ll tell you why. He’s got everything that Benson has plus size, skating, physicality, and experience. The only thing he might not have is Tyler’s hockey IQ and with Perlini, Shore, I find, is a bit more responsible and more committed to the role.
If Shore wasn’t there, I’d have McLeod on the wing and Derek Ryan at center.
But, the point being, it’s been a really long time since the Oilers had this kind of depth at forward and with that, they should be able to take advantage of the compressed schedule.
However, as Spector points out, the depth MUST come through when Connor and Leon aren’t or this group will be golfing and welcoming another top-14 draft pick this summer.
Spector’s Hockey
- LA PRESSE: Guillaume Lefrancois reports Montreal Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said he was willing to trade Jeff Petry if it works out for both sides.
- MONTREAL GAZETTE: Stu Cowan suggests Brendan Gallagher faces an uncertain future with the Canadiens. Though he’s in the first season of a six-year, $39 million contract, Cowan believes it would be understandable if the 29-year-old winger didn’t want to stick around for a rebuild at this stage in his career.
- NBC SPORTS BOSTON: Nick Goss listed five forwards he believes the Bruins should target before the March 21 trade deadline… Topping his list is the Vancouver CanucksJ.T. Miller as he’d be a great fit as the Bruins’ second-line center.
