After beating the Arizona Coyotes with ease last night, the Edmonton Oilers head to Las Vegas. The Vegas Golden Knights have had a fairly rough start to the season winning once in 3 games played. They have also been hit with injures very hard. This is one of the times the Oilers should have an easy victory in Vegas. They will still need to play well to win though. I have put together 3 keys to victory below to assure another Oilers win.
1. Koskinen Stays Steady
After coming in after Mike Smith left the Anaheim Ducks game with an injury Mikko Koskinen has played well. He has only allowed 2 goals on 49 shots in 88 minutes of play. His 0.959SV% puts him in the top 5 in the league. If he can continue to maintain this, the Edmonton Oilers will be very happy.
The expectation is Mikko Koskinen will start again Friday at Vegas, Dave Tippett said. Final determination will be made in the morning.
— Daniel Nugent-Bowman (@DNBsports) October 22, 2021
As of right now it looks like Koskinen will be getting the start tonight. If he is able to keep the goals against to 2 or less the Edmonton Oilers should get the win. With the lack of skill playing for Vegas tonight this should be very doable. If he doesn’t let in an easy goals this should be an easy task for Mikko.
2. Take Advantage of Injuries
As I mentioned above the Vegas Golden Knights are missing a lot of high end talent. They are going to be short Alex Tuch, Max Pacioretty, Mark Stone and potentially Alec Martinez in the game tonight. This is 4 of their top 8 point leaders from last season.
With Vegas missing these top players the matchups for the top players will be much easier. Mark Stone is one of the best two way players in the league, without him on the ice, the high skilled Oiler players will have more ability to create chances.
3. Play a Full 60 Minutes
In the game last night the Edmonton Oilers started the game slow. Mikko Koskinen had to make a couple of key saves early to keep the Oilers even. Once they started to play well in front of him, they made the Arizona Coyotes look like the bottom of the league team they are.
Even being shorthanded the Vegas Golden Knights are a team that can beat you. They still have solid defense and goaltending. The Oilers will need to play a full 60 minutes if they want to beat Vegas, a team a lot of people have competing with the Oilers for Pacific Division winners.
I think the Edmonton Oilers will extend their season starting win streak to 5 tonight. The way they are playing right now it is very hard to bet against them. If they can sure up their defense and play a full 60 minutes it will be hard to bet against them very much moving forward.