Edmonton Oilers Talk: More McLovin’ in the Top Six and Coaches Players Hated

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Edmonton Sun

OILERS NOTES: Warren Foegele silences critics with big game in Seattle

…in his last two games, moved up in the line-up, he has scored three goals and shown why the Oilers wanted him. He still has to work on his goals for and against (minus-6) but he was all over it in Seattle.
Foegele had never scored a PP goal in his 200 NHL games in Carolina, not even a power-play assist. But he has two PP goals as an Oiler…
The 17 shots the Oilers allowed in Seattle was the fewest since April 9, 2017 against Vancouver …
Oilers winger Colton Sceviour has had eight NHL fights, usually one a season but the scrap with Seattle’s Jeremy Lauzon was his second in two months. The fight with Lauzon came after a dirty hit from behind that Wes McCauley, the consensus NHL top ref with eight Stanley Cup finals assignments, and partner Jon McIsaac somehow thought was clean.
Leon Draisaitl’s three-assist night in Seattle was the 58th time he’s had three or more points since the 2014-2015 season when he started his Oiler career.
Nine of McDavid’s 17 goals this season have come in the third period, when the game’s on the line.
Before Saturday’s tilt in Seattle, Oilers farmhand Seth Griffith had last played an NHL game March 7, 2017 in Calgary.

BLH’s Thoughts: Shocking what happens when you put players in a position to feel valued and trusted, eh? Equally as surprising, Warren Foegele producing goals when he’s got a real NHL center to play with!

No offense to Ryan McLeod, but Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid might be the key to Foegele’s offense (like Jordan Staal was in Carolina) and if I were Dave Tippett, I’d be moving Nuge to 3C and Foegele up to Leon’s LW because that second line’s offense has stunk to high heaven this year as a group. Draisaitl will get his points but if his wingers aren’t producing, the line might saw off the other team’s scoring at best. McLovin’ deserves the promotion, doesn’t he?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPIn4qtcjAQ

The Hockey Writers

Oilers and Mike Babcock a Terrible Fit If Tippett Gets Fired

There are a few reasons not to buy into the Babcock speculation.
- The first is that there’s no reason to assume head coach Dave Tippett is at risk of losing his job. While GM Ken Holland isn’t going to love a six-game losing streak, that kind of run isn’t incredibly abnormal in today’s NHL. It happens.
The only way Tippett’s job becomes a talking point is if the Oilers continue to win under Glen Gulutzan and Jim Playfair while Tippett is out on COVID protocol. That would have to be followed by a Tippett return that sees the Oilers nosedive again.
A hallmark of Babcock’s run as Maple Leafs’ head coach was that his team offered underwhelming offense that couldn’t overcome the lackluster defense.
There is also the fact that Babcock was said to have issues with his top players. If there’s one thing the Oilers have, it’s incredible talent at the top end. Like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner — both who reportedly had rumored issues — the last thing the Oilers need is a coach that might stir things up with Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.

BLH’s Thoughts: Am I off my head or something because I don’t recall six-game losing streaks being commonplace in today’s NHL. Maybe the bottom-dwellers going on those kind of slumps often, but not the good ones. Maybe once in a blue moon a team in the upper-echelon of the league will grow cold, but not all the time like Parsons is intimating.

The thing that made the “Tippett on the hotseat” rumors as hot as they were was the firings in Vancouver and Philly. I don’t know if the fanbase would’ve gotten as irate as they did if they didn’t see other clubs doing it.

As for Babcock, he knows how to win and not every coach is well-liked. Just look at the great Scotty Bowman and the legendary Vitkor Tikhonov.

Scotty Bowman was not well-liked by his players, to the point to when he was coaching in Pittsburgh, he was asked not to run the practices. But the greatest NHL coach in history won a lot of Stanley Cups and was bench boss to some of the greatest to have ever played the game and how many of those hall-of-famers went demanding trades after he was hired?…

With Tikhonov, the quotes from a Yahoo Sports article on the Russian speak for themselves,

“He could be brutal. Not only did he make his players train, train, train, he didn’t allow them to speak to outsiders, let alone the media. They weren’t allowed to live in the Olympic Village.”

“We didn’t have any freedoms,” (Igor) Larionov once said.

(LINK)

Spector’s Hockey

THE ATHLETIC: In a recent mailbag segment… Salvian believes they’d (Calgary Flames) like to add a depth defenseman and a high-impact forward. Regarding the latter, she observed there are several good potential rental options such as the San Jose Sharks Tomas Hertl, Anaheim Ducks’ Rickard Rakell, Nashville Predators’ Filip Forsberg and the Seattle Kraken’s Jared McCann.
THE MERCURY NEWS: Curtis Pashelka recently shot down any hope San Jose Sharks fans might have had of seeing Joe Pavelski return as a free agent next summer. The still-productive 37-year-old winger said his No. 1 option is re-signing with the Dallas Stars. He indicated he and his family love it in Dallas and he really enjoys playing with the Stars.