Edmonton Oilers Depth Needs To Wake Up If Team Hopes To Move Forward

The Edmonton Oilers are tied with the Vancouver Canucks in their second-round playoff series. After winning game 4, this series is now a best of 3. Being a best of three there is now much less room for any errors. There can also be no more players struggling if either of these teams hopes to eliminate the other.

For the Edmonton Oilers, their biggest issue is depth scoring. So far in this series, the big horses have been doing almost all the pulling. If the Oilers hope to take down the Canucks they will need some of their bottom 6 players to get on the scoresheet. The Canucks on the other hand, their depth mostly their third line has had an excellent series.

It would be a huge help to the success of this team if Oilers coach, Kris Knoblauch, could let his team roll through all 4 of the lines when he is looking for a goal it would be an advantage because it would let Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl take a bit of time off and rest them. If this team goes on a run the Oilers are going to need those two players at the top of their game.

Not only would it help them in the long run, but having the bottom six put up some goals would really help to beat the Canucks. In this series so far every game has been separated by one goal. That means if the bottom six would be able to add a goal in a game it could either put a bigger gap in a potential Oilers lead or close the gap if they are losing.

For the OIlers they don’t play till tomorrow night again on Vancouver. If I were Kris Knoblauch I would start looking at switching in and out some players in the bottom six if they don’t start scoring. They may be able to make it by Vancouver with no depth scoring, but their next-round opponent will not let that go so easily.