Evander Kane
The Dallas Stars are a tougher team than either the Golden Knights or the LA Kings, so the Oilers sandpaper players will need to step up and make a difference. The most impactful of that type of player is Evander Kane, as he will be playing the most minutes among the gritty players.
Since coming off of his season long injure Kane has really impressed me and he only seems to be picking up steam. In his first couple of games back he was still trying to feel things out but at the end of that Vegas series he was causing havoc and changing the momentum for the Oilers in a positive way. Hopefully, he can do that in this series as well.
The Stars have players like Mason Marchment and Jamie Benn, those two players like to play on and most of the time past the line, just like Kane does. The thing about Kane though, is he has more skill than both of those players, so he can also help the Oilers out on the score sheet. While Benn was once a player who could put up points, those days are far behind him, so if these two go head-to-head, expect Kane to come out ahead in both toughness and on the scoresheet.
Darnell Nurse
I do not think there is a player that Oilers fans love to hate more than Darnell Nurse. My best guess as to why they don't like him is to do with the amount of money he is getting paid. His cap it is quite steep for what he brings, but when it comes to the playoffs cap hit means nothing. He has the tendency to over commit on some plays which tends to leave players open, and that was very visible in the early games against the Kings.
Since those games though, he has been solid in his end, has he made some mistakes? Of course, he has, but every player on this team has. For the Oilers to have success, Nurse is going to have to be solid. Like I said about Skinner, if Nurse is on his game, he has the ability to shut down teams' offenses. Against a deep team like the Stars that is going to be more important than it has been against the Golden Knights and Kings.
In this series, expect to see Nurse getting a lot of minutes. He will be leaned on by the coaching staff to shut down the Stars top players. If Nurse can minimize the major mistakes in his game his ability to shut down players will be very important if the Oilers want to win this series. If Nurse does have lots of mistakes, that puts more pressure on Skinner to make tough saves, while Skinner can make those saves, relying on him to much will hurt this team in the long run.
The way the Edmonton Oilers are playing right now, I do not see the Dallas Stars being a problem, but I am concerned that with the time off, the Oilers may have lost a bit of the mojo they had at the end of the Vegas series. If that mojo is there, I expect these three players to still be playing their best hockey, and if they are playing their best, the Oilers should be punching their ticket to another Stanley Cup Final appearance.