Edmonton Oilers fans get to have a chance to cheer their team onto victory tonight as the series now shifts back to Edmonton. While the Oilers are down two games and are coming of an honestly terrible performance a win tonight would make it so that the Oilers fans forget about everything. With the series at 2-1 the Oilers will have new life and hopefully put a bit doubt in the head of the Kings players.
For the Oilers there is one big change heading into this game, and it is between the pipes. After coming in relief in game two Calvin Pickard will be getting the start tonight. Pickard in game two faced 3 shots after he came in for Stuart Skinner in those three shots he did let in one goal. I don't know if this move is to help improve the goaltending or just to try and give this team a bump. In the regular season Skinner put up a 0.896 SV% while Pickard had a 0.900 SV%. This number for Pickard was obviously in a smaller sample size, with Pickard 31 games while Skinner started in 50. I don't know if this is going to make much of a change as the chances the Oilers defenseman are giving up have been pretty tough to save.
Oilers need to stop the high danger chances
To follow up on my last point there, the Oilers need to stop giving the LA Kings 10 bell chances. If you take a look at the majority of the goals, there had been several errors that have led to the goal. While, yes, you would like to have gotten a save on those chances from time to time, but I don't think you can singularly point your finger at goaltending. The rest of the team need to buckle down and be better in their own end. The extends out of 5 on 5 and goes to the penalty kill as well.
Oilers special teams need to be better
So far this series the LA Kings have been dominating the special teams. The Kings have scored 5 powerplay goals in the two games and have gone 50% on the powerplay. Not only are the Kings scoring on the powerplay, but they have yet to let the Oilers powerplay score a goal on them. So, far this series the Kings are winning the special teams battle by a large margin. If the Oilers want to get back in this series, they are going to need to reverse that train.
If the Oilers want to have a chance to get back in this series, we will need to play an overall better game. Good thing for the Oilers though is that they have shown they have the ability to control the play for large chunks of time. If they do that, they should have no problem winning this game tonight.