Edmonton Oilers:3 Keys to Victory Against The Pittsburg Penguins
After beating the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday, the Edmonton Oilers are back at home taking on the Pittsburg Penguins tonight. The Penguins are coming into tonight riding a 2 game losing streak, after a loss Monday against the Calgary Flames.
The Pittsburg Penguins currently sit fourth in the difficult Metropolitan Division. This team in the past few years has been getting slightly worse as their top end stars start to slow down. So far this year Sidney Crosby is having a tough time finding his stride after missing the first 12 games this season. If you add that to the injury of Evgeni Malkin its no wonder the Penguins have been under .500 this year. Here are 3 keys for the Oilers for winning this game.
Depth Defensemen
The Edmonton Oilers are having some injury/illness issues. With 4 of their top 6 defenseman out, the defensive pairings look like a preseason lineup. With the news yesterday that Cody Ceci is in COVID protocol, Ceci became the 4th regular defensemen to be placed out of the lineup.
This does mean that we get to take a look at another defensive prospect though. Markus Niemelainen will draw into the lineup tonight. He is the 3rd player from Bakersfield playing on the backend tonight. That means that half the Edmonton Oilers defenseman aren’t NHL regulars. This is definitely going to be an issue.
I am not saying that the Oilers will let in lots of goals today, but I am saying I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. If the Edmonton Oilers want to win this game they will need help from their forwards and goalie, as the backend is bound to make some mistakes today.
Out Score The Problems
There may be some issues on the backend right now, but that is not the case for this forward group. The Edmonton Oilers have proven this year that they are able to score goals in bunches. The Oilers are 4th in the league in goals for and 2nd in goals for per game. Tonight is going to be a night where they are going to have to keep that going.
With McDavid and Draisaitl on your team this is definitely possible. To make this more likely the Oilers will need to get on the powerplay to pad those goal numbers. Going into this game with a 37.7% powerplay percentage, this should be a way to add some goals.
Special Teams
As I mentioned above the Edmonton Oilers will need to score some powerplay goals. They will need to play hard at even strength to draw penalties. They will also need the refs to call the infractions that take place.
On the other side they will need to stay out of the penalty box. Even though they have the leagues 4th best penalty kill, you don’t want to give up chances. Most of their penalty kill defensemen are out of the lineup, which means an inexperienced penalty kill. With this group I don’t see them keeping that kill rate going.
If they finish with more powerplays than the Penguins that will give the Oilers a good chance to win.
This should be a fairly exciting game to watch, with inexperienced defense and the forward trying extra hard to build a lead that should lead to lots of scoring chances each way. I believe there will be a lot of goals being scored tonight.