What if the Oilers are just saving all of their energy until they face Western Conference teams? What if they’re just messing around with us by making us all worried and unhappy and then when they begin their Western trip in a couple weeks. BAM! They turn on the jets and play like we all expected them to play. That’d be cool right?

I’m trying to stay focussed and write about injuries but I’m also trying not to cry when I think about the Oilers play right now. Yes I still believe in them, but man is this season frustrating. Now’s the time where we’re supposed to turn things around and begin our 35 game winning streak, but more and more guys keep getting injured and it’s pretty deflating. Let’s get into them:

Todd McLellan would never admit it, but I have strong reason to believe that this is the moment in the season where Cam Talbot tweaked something. It didn’t look to good when it happened on the ice but all appeared to be fine. THEN just a few games later news breaks out that he re-tweaked a prior injury… ? Suspicious, no?

Anyways, the plan is for Cam Talbot to begin skating at the end of the week, and his timeline remains at minimum two weeks. This means that if all goes well with his recovery, he’ll be back sometime at the end of next week. McLellan said he’s walking around and feeling great, but when put into a game situation he has to be careful not to re-tweak whatever’s bothering him. All I know is that the sooner we get Talbot back, the sooner we’ll all feel more comfortable on the back end and that we won’t have to make a drastic trade to bring in an experienced back-up goaltender.

Larsson, on the other hand, had a setback with his back injury he’s facing in a practice at the beginning of the week, and will be a longer timeline than originally expected. The announcement of Larsson’s timeline came the day after the announcement of Talbot’s injury which is the equivalent to getting kicked in the groin after falling down a bunch of stairs.

Adam Larsson’s injury is labelled as an upper-body, and McLellan stated that he “woke up with it” which I find a little hard to believe… but who am I to say otherwise. He was only supposed to be out for a week, but since his setback, the timeline is unknown. With Larsson, Talbot, and Sekera out, we desperately need someone to step up on the back-end and save us from this misery. Brandon Davidson maybe?

Andrej Sekera has taken the next big step on his road to recovery, and that’s participating in contact drills. A return date is not set yet but as per Jason Gregor, he’s hoping to return before Christmas. Sekera hasn’t played a game since the playoffs last year so I’d expect him to have a slow start. At this point though we’ll take anything from him.

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