The Edmonton Oilers were finally able to put an end to a six-game losing streak this past week. As they won both of the games they were able to play this week against Seattle and Columbus.
Unfortunately, Edmonton, like the rest of the league, has had to deal with its share of postponed games leading up to the league-wide four-day shutdown.
On the bright side, the extended break allows some of the injured players to miss fewer games, and it will provide a much-needed rest to the rest of the roster as well.
Back to this past week though, let’s dive into this edition of the stock report!
Trending up: Supporting cast
The Oilers scored 10 goals over the pair of games they played, and only one of them was scored by Connor McDavid, and Leon Draisaitl scored zero of them.
Warren Foegele had three goals in two games which was nice to see from him. And the rest of Edmonton’s depth really stepped up. Particularly on Saturday where the Oilers were really beat up against the Kraken.
Character win!
— Bob Stauffer (@Bob_Stauffer) December 19, 2021
Down 3 of their top 6 and 5 FWD’s overall and down 2-0 in the game…Edmonton outshoots Seattle 41-17 in 5-3 win.
Draisaitl-3 A
Foegele-2 G
McDavid and Bouchard 1-1-2.
Full contribution from everyone tonight!
Getting some secondary scoring has been a necessity all year long, just to take some of the load off of McDavid and Draisaitl’s plates.
Obviously, a two-game sample is nothing to write home about, but having other parts of the lineup was crucial to get out of the losing streak.
Trending down: Covid situation
As everyone knows, and as I said earlier, a lot of games have been postponed recently due to a surge of players and staff league-wide that have landed on the Covid-19 list. The NHL has postponed 49 games to this point and there will be a league-wide pause through the Holiday break.
Under normal circumstances, the league likely would have continued to play games as scheduled, but players understandably did not want to risk spending the holidays away from their families.
As to when the postponed games will be played, that remains unresolved as of now.
Hopefully, the league will come out of the pause strong and everything will continue to operate as it has all season long. And there is talk of the league switching their testing protocols like leagues such as the NFL have, to only test symptomatic individuals and allow players to return to play more hastily. However, while a similar system might be adopted in the future, it does not appear imminent for the NHL
When the league does return to play on the 27th, the Edmonton Oilers will face off against their rivals in Calgary for a battle of Alberta showdown.