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Game Time: 5:00PM
TV/Radio: WGN Ch. 9, NHL Network, Sportsnet 1, WGN-AM 720
53rd Parallel: Copper & Blue, Oilers Nation
It’s a slightly earlier start tonight on West Madison to accomodate the western Canadian audiences as the Hawks welcome Connor McDavid and his merry band of pranksters into the UC for their only visit of the year, with both teams capping off a three-in-four weekend stretch yet again, with all of the Oil’s games coming on the road.
I usually don’t get into the whaling about wasting the career of a generational talent. Connor McDavid will hardly be the first truly great player to not get to play in too many games that matter. This list could go forever. Off the top of my head: Dan Marino, Don Mattingly, Joey Votto, and Mike Trout will probably soon be on this list. Fuck, baseball fans don’t complain as loudly about Trout being on a go-nowhere team in a go-nowhere place, and Trout is like two of McDavids. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED.
Anyway, the Oilers continue to fuck up having the best player of his generation on their team through surrounding him with basically nothing, and that seems like it’s going to continue for another season. Let’s see just how desolate it is.
2017-2018: 36-40-6 76 points 234 GF 263 GA 50.6 CF% 50.8 xGF% 7.4 SH% .917 SV%
Goalies: So when the Oilers faked being a relevant team two years ago, it was basically because Cam And Magic Talbot was really good. .919 overall and a .927 at evens. And he did that while basically starting every game. But you can’t do that to a goalie these days. The game is too fast and takes too much effort. Sure, Grant Fuhr or Martin Brodeur could do it back in the day when your defense was allowed to tackle, rope, and suspend any forward coming through the neutral zone from the rafters without a penalty. You had to make 25 low-pressure saves a night. Not so much anymore.
Talbot paid for that workload last year. He still made 67 starts but dipped to a .908 SV% overall and a .916 at evens. Talbot also saw his medium-danger and high-danger chance SV% drop, perhaps because he was just a tick slower than what he’d been in the past.
And Talbot is 31 now, so it’s not really clear how he’s going to bounce back from 140 combined starts the past two years. 31 isn’t past it as a goalie, but with that workload it just might be.
Backing him up is KHL refugee Mikko Koskinen, who spent the past four seasons backstopping what was clearly the best team in Russia in St. Petersburg. The numbers there are ok to good, but he’s going from a superior team in that league to being behind Kris Russell and Adam Larsson. At least the climate of Edmonton will be familiar to him. Seriously, why would you leave Russia for somewhere just as cold? That’s bad advice right there.
Defense: And this is obviously where the problems start. The Oilers were able to get Darnell Nurse into camp on a two-year bridge deal, so they don’t have that headache. On the flip side, as much as we love his potential and have pined for him on the Hawks for about four years now, he still hasn’t proven to be much more than a second-pairing guy yet. The foot-in-the-ass-of-the-world mercenary that he at times flashes hasn’t materialized full-time yet.
Which leaves the Oilers without a top-pairing d-man. Larsson will never live down “THE TRADE IS ONE-FOR-ONE,” which really has nothing to do with him. He’s a sort of fine middle-pairing guy. So is Matthew Benning. So’s Oscar Klefbom. Kris Russell is a fine second pairing guy on your beer league team. It’s not a complete disaster here but it’s far from good either. There are puck-movers and I suppose if Todd McLellan were inclined he could get-up-and-go through Klefbom, Nurse, and Benning, But his style has always been more conservative than that, and this unit just isn’t going to suppress chances enough to get away with it.
Forwards: Well, in theory this would be the best center-depth in the division. It’s really hard to better McDavid-Draisaitl-RNH down the middle. But the Oilers are so bereft at wing that they usually have to punt one of these guys to the top line wing spots so that Run CMD has anyone to pass to instead of seeing Milan Lucic‘s ogre-gape 50 feet behind him. They’ve added Tobias Rieder and Ty Rattie to the ranks, which is like seasoning your food with compressed air. The best winger on this team might seriously be Drake Caggiula. I don’t know what to tell you. This is a team with the best player in the league and we have to say they’re not going to score enough. How’s that even possible?
Outlook: McLellan generally gets the most out of what he has, though his offensive strategy is a bit boring and plain. It’s a lot of blasts from the point. In a division with the Sharks and Knights and possibly a spikier Flames team, the Oilers need to get out and run, basically. McDavid will get his 100+, Draisaitl will be really good, and RNH will continue to score points no one cares about.
But much like the local outfit, there’s a lot of ifs here. If Talbot can regain the form of two years ago, and if two or more of their young d-men make a huge leap, and if one of their wingers pops off for no reason other than the sense of humor of the gods, the Oilers can scratch out a wildcard spot in a bad division. But they need all of those, and that’s a big ask.
Previous Team Previews
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RECORDS: Oilers 18-21-3 Hawks 19-15-6
PUCK DROP: 2pm
TV: WGN
ED-WOOD-TON: OilersNation.com
I don’t know who sanctioned a 2pm start, but they’re going to pay. Neither of these teams wants to be out during daylight hours right now. Hell, neither probably wants to be in public. Two teams that had designs on being a lot higher in the standings than they are will make it a lunch today on Madison St. Considering how things have gone for each team recently, a loss today is going to feel closer to terminal than it probably should. Though for the Oilers, it very well might be.
We’ll start with the Oilers, who have had maybe the biggest balls-up of a season this side of the Penguins. Since we last saw them last Friday, they’ve lost to the Jets, Kings, and Stars by a combined score of 15-1, while sneaking in a shootout victory over the Ducks in there. They’re below .500, miles out of a playoff spot, and really looking at the guillotine on this season very soon. They may even already be sellers, or should be, if you could find anyone on an expiring contract that anyone would want. The Chiarelli Panic Trade Countdown is getting awfully low.
It’s not hard to identify where things have gone wrong. One, Cam Talbot just plainly hasn’t been very good, and he’s been especially woeful on the penalty kill. That’s fed into their historically bad PK, which the power play isn’t making up for, and you can’t win games if you have to win at even-strength by two or three goals. It’s not all on Talbot for the penalty kill, however. The Oilers have the worst xGA/60 on the kill of anyone in the league and it isn’t even close. It’s over two goals worse per 60 than the team in 30th. That’s the same gap between 30th and 22nd. They just give up way too many good looks on the kill, and Talbot would have to perform miracles (MIRACLES!) to get through. He’s been quite the opposite, and hence you have this kindergarten recess.
On top of that, the Oilers just don’t have the finish to make their still-exemplary metrics count, as strange as that sounds. Yes, with Draisaitl now playing in the middle they might have the best center-depth in the West. Certainly in the Pacific. And yet with no wingers that you’d piss on if they were on fire, other than maybe Puljujarvi, it’s almost rendered useless. Run CMD can spin all the golden yarn he wants but if he’s waiting five seconds for Milan Lucic to catch up, who the fuck cares? This is a team where a suspension of Pat Maroon actually matters. You don’t want to be that team. Peter Kriss doesn’t even want to be that team.
All this has masked the fact that the defense has actually improved, though still isn’t Final-contender worthy which is where the Oilers had their eyes set before the year. Darnell Nurse has ascended to the top pairing, and you could get away with Adam Larsson there too if you had a really solid second pairing. Andrej Sekera and Matt Benning do not that pair make. Kris Russell is still watching the puck all the time on the third with KLEFBOM KLEFBOM YOU’RE MY KLEFBOM.
For the Hawks, Anton Forsberg will put a pause on the Glass Jeff Experience for a day, and the Hawks really need him to resign that to a footnote on this season. Forsberg has had his moments both ways, but he needs to grab the brass ring with Corey Crawford still in the land of wind and ghosts. There was no other word on lineup changes today, but you could see Jan Rutta come back in because he isn’t doing anyone any good in the pressbox. Then again, that’s the story for Michal Kempny and you know how that goes.
The Stars got their ass rubbed in the moonshine yesterday in Dallas, and Cam And Magic Talbot was pulled early in the 2nd. Whether he turns around or Chicago Rat Hockey Ragdoll Al Montoya gets the start, the Hawks are playing a severely wounded and shaken team here. The Oilers are basically looking for an excuse to down tools, and the Hawks have basically run out of time to get their ass in gear. The game against the Rangers would see this outfit off. A start like Friday’s will give them life. So the choice is simple.
Game #41 Preview
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Game Time: 8:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBC Sports Chicago, Various SportsNet Affiliates, WGN-AM 720
Peter Pocklington’s Hairpiece: Copper N Blue, Oilers Nation
With no time to mull over whatever the fuck that was last night in Vancouver, the Hawks stay in Western Canada and head to its northern reaches in Edmonton, where they find an Oilers squad in a similar situation to themselves, with their season still stuck in second gear as well.
Scott Lewis works for some alternative station in Toronto. He claims he used to work at TSN. We’re not sure. But he’s an Oilers fan, or at least a fair approximation of one. So we let him do this, and rewarded him with many treat pellets as a result. Follow him on Twitter @TheScottLewis.
Game #37 Preview
If the Leafs are going to be the annoying bandwagon team in the East, whose fanbase will be the constant drone of the season as they try and flagellate themselves as publicly as possible, then the Oilers are going to be that in the West. They won their first playoff round in 10 years last year, and probably should have beaten the Ducks in the second round. It won’t take people long to point out that Toews and Kane won a Cup in their third season, and that Crosby was in a Final in his third. The training wheels are off Run CMD and the boys. It’s basically June or bust for them. Unfortunately for them, their dumbass GM may have put too many roadblocks in their way. Or more to the point, behind them on defense.
’16-’17 Record: 47-26-9 103 points (2nd in Pacific, out in 2nd round to ANA)
Team Stats 5v5: 49.9 CF% (18th) 51.0 SF% (9th) 49.7 SCF% (19th) 8.2 SH% (9th) .927 SV% (7th)
Special Teams: 22.8 PP% (5th) 80.7 PK% (17th)
Some free agent news breaking the past couple days, which is rare for August but hey we’ll take it.
-Today, the Edmonton Oilers signed Leon Draisaitl to an eight-year, $65 million deal. Drice was coming out of his entry deal, and the Oilers weren’t going to fuck around with a bridge deal, just like they didn’t with Run CMD who starts taking home $12 million a year starting the season after this upcoming one.
And nor should they.
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RECORDS: Oilers 31-18-9 Hawks 37-15-5
PUCK DROP: 6pm Central
TV: WGN in the 606, NHLN below the 49th, Sportsnet above it
YOU WILL KNOW THAT I AM AN OIL MAN: Oilers Nation, Copper And Blue
TEAM ADJUSTED CORSI %: Oilers – 50.8 (13th) Hawks – 50.5 (15th)
TEAM ADJUSTED xGF%: Oilers – 49.8 (17th) Hawks – 48.1 (20th)
POWER PLAY %: Oilers – 20.4 (11th) Hawks – 19.6 (16th)
PENALTY KILL %: Oilers – 81.4 (15th) Hawks – 76.8 (27th)
The somehow-controversial (only the NHL could fuck up the concept of a bye week and have it become A THING like this) bye week comes to an end for the Hawks tonight, and they’ll try and buck the trend of teams with a tan getting tolchocked when they go back to work. But the Hawks have usually avoided such pitfalls under Joel Quenneville.
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Game Time: 8:00PM CST
TV/Radio: NBCSN, WGN-AM 720
Rear View Mirror: OilersNation
The times, they are a-changing in Edmonton. They’ve got a fancy new building wherein the lights are actually at full power and the benches are on the proper side of the ice, even if that ice is not as fast or as high a quality as that at Northlands/SkyReach/Rexall (sky point). They’re even trying the novel concept of having the puck more than the other team, which so far has yielded positive, if modest results.
See now this is what I’m talking about.
We have our most exciting game of the tournament, Russia-North America from last night. And while we wax poetic about the Olympics and about the two Canada-US games from 2010, how many other great games do you remember from the Olympics? Maybe one or two others? This was as good as anything that tournament has offered up.
Ok, sure, it’s one made-up team that essentially got to pick current or about-to-be All-Stars while everyone else had harder restrictions. But it was still faster than just about anything you’re going to find in an NHL game. And that’s the point. These international tournaments are supposed to be of a higher level than what we get in the league. This is why soccer fans love the World Cup and European Championships (even though the last version of each of those has been rather dogshit). It’s the best the sport can produce. That’s what we got last night.
