Good morning, Oilers fans I hope you had a good and relaxing sleep knowing that the Edmonton Oilers were able to pull out that win last night. I don't know about you, but watching an Oilers game is really putting my heart through the ringer and it is only game 3. Hopefully it goes much longer than this though, so it gets used to the high rate.
Heading into game last night it was pretty much a must win game. There is a huge difference being down 2-1 than it is being down 3-0 and for the Oilers to get the win tonight in the way they did should do a lot for this team moving forward. Not only will this win give the Oilers some momentum heading into game 4, but it will hopefully put in some seeds of doubt in the Kings heads. Since the Oilers have had the Kings number in the playoff recently any bad thing for the Kings could very well snowball in their head.
Heading into the game on Sunday the Oilers will need to keep on playing the way they did last night. The one area they will still need to work on though is their penalty kill. While the Oilers at least broke even on special teams, they still gave up 2 powerplay goals against in 2 opportunities. If the Oilers hope to have any success moving forward, they are going to need figure out how to kill a penalty. The good news from this game is they did figure out how to score a powerplay goal going 2/2 last night.
Will there be any changes for game 4
I honestly would not expect the Oilers to make any changes to the lineup heading into tomorrow's game 4. If there is any change that I think that Knoblauch should look at taking out Trent Frederic, you can tell just by watching him that his injury is still bugging him. The fact that he only played 10:24 should be a sign that even the coaching staff is aware he is not healthy. If he was 100%, he would be a valuable addition to this team, but at this point I think Kapanen should get a look, at least Kapanen might help the powerplay.
With the game 4 being almost just as important as game 3(turns out every playoff game is important), the Oilers will have the chance to break even and take the series back to Los Angeles tied. While it will be a struggle to listen to a bunch of ladies play the harmonica I would like nothing more than for the Oilers to head back their tied with a chance to take the series lead.