The Edmonton Oilers seem to be finding their mojo at just the right time down the stretch, and they need to keep that momentum going to secure a playoff spot and, despite the rollercoaster of a season, still have a chance to capture their first division title since the 1986-87 season.

They’re riding a three-game winning streak, and in this edition of Oilers Thoughts, we’ll cover Matt Savoie and Josh Samanski stepping up, meeting Ty Emberson’s high school hockey coach on the Nation Vacation, Kris Knoblauch finding the right mix for the second line, and a potential adjustment to the Oilers’ struggling power play.

Matt Savoie found success after earning a promotion to the first line with Connor McDavid on March 13 against the St. Louis Blues, recording three points in the next three games.

However, following a 4–0 shutout loss to the Florida Panthers, head coach Kris Knoblauch pushed ‘max speed’ on the line blender, dropping Savoie to the bottom six for the next game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, which made me shake my fist furiously at the T.V and write that the rookie should’ve stayed on the first line.

But Knoblauch went back to what worked, and over the last three games, Savoie has been back alongside McDavid on the top line and has been on fire, scoring three goals, including a shorthanded goal and the game-winner in the last game against the Anaheim Ducks. Moreover, that line as a whole — Savoie, McDavid, and Vasily Podkolzin — have looked dominant, outshooting the opposition 22–10 over the last three games.

That said, in my view, the most impressive of Savoie’s three goals over the last stretch was the tally against the Vegas Golden Knights. He read what his captain was going to do, found open space, lifted a defender’s stick while doing so, received the puck and sniped one short side. That’s a confident play — one that, to me, shows he’s starting to figure out netminders’ sweet spots at the NHL level.

Also, one thing that didn’t get much attention was the amazing play from the St. Albert native to set the entire sequence in motion — Savoie won a board battle with a stick lift, freed the puck, and kicked it to Walman to start the play, just 13 seconds before he scored, as shown below.

The photo above is just a small example of the subtle, but key plays the 22-year-old makes night in and night out that don’t always draw a lot of attention.

Nevertheless, it’s a revelation for the Oilers to finally have a young player, on an entry-level contract, come in and not only find a fit on the first line with McDavid, but also make an impact. It reminds me of what Sidney Crosby had in rookie Jake Guentzel in 2016–17 — a comparison Jason Gregor has made — who put up 33 points in 40 games with the Pittsburgh Penguins and carried that strong play into the playoffs with 21 points in 25 games. Fingers crossed that Savoie follows a similar path.

Oilers’ defenceman Ty Emberson is having a solid season all around, but since returning to the lineup after missing five games with an injury, he’s looked even sharper.

Over the last three Oilers’ wins, he’s averaged 13:25 minutes, has a 1–0 goal share at five-on-five, thrown four hits, and blocked a few shots. His reads have also been spot on, and he’s also threaded several crisp 50-foot tape-to-tape passes onto his forward’s tape.

On that note, for one of those three games, we travelled to Vegas to watch the Oilers take on the Golden Knights for the Nation Vacation, and it was a tremendous time with an amazing crew.

But what I love about the Nation Vacation trips, along with many other things, is all the fun and random people you’ll meet.

While watching the Oilers from the Party Deck at T-Mobile Arena, host of ‘Oilersnation After Dark,’ Aaron Bordato, and I struck up a conversation with the person beside us, who happened to be Emberson’s high school hockey coach from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

His former coach mentioned that the blueliner was always a hardworking, very tough defender with a good head on his shoulders and he also noted that he had come across one of the earlier pieces I wrote about Emberson when he first came to Edmonton, as he follows his career.

But above all, he said he was incredibly proud of Emberson’s achievements and making the NHL — so much so that he brought his family to Vegas to watch him play.

Emberson’s high school hockey coach celebrated with all of us after the big Oilers overtime win in Vegas, and overall, it was a fun conversation with someone who had an early impact on Emberson’s hockey development. Also, hearing what he had once envisioned — a player in Emberson during high school with the potential to play in the NHL — actually happen, and watching him experience it live and celebrate it, was very cool to see and be a part of.

Josh Samanski has been playing solid as of late, scoring his first NHL goal in style four games ago — an end-to-end beauty against the Tampa Bay Lightning (kidding, but that’s what he’ll tell his future grandchildren, at least) and, according to Natural Stat Trick, over the last three games, his 8.91 blocks per 60 minutes lead the entire team.

Lately, one thing I’m really starting to admire about the 6-foot-2, nearly 200-pounder is that whenever a scrum breaks out, the rookie is always among the first to jump in and help out his pals, which has happened at least a few times over the last several games.

I think back to the game against the Dallas Stars on March 12, when Samanski tripped Justin Hryckowian into the boards and a big scrum ensued, and maybe something clicked for him and he thought, “hey, this is fun,” because whenever a scrum has happened since then and he’s been on the ice, he’s jumped right in the mix, which is something you like to see from a youngster with only 17 NHL games under his belt.

Despite the scrums, the Erding, Germany, native hasn’t gotten into an NHL fight yet. That said, with the way he’s been jumping into the fire, dropping the mitts for the first time over the next two home games would be fitting — especially with close to 30 of his countrymen from Germany in town, as OilersNation Germany is in Oil Country to watch the next two Oilers’ home games.

With Leon Draisaitl out of the lineup, the Oilers need a strong second line if they’re going to have a chance to come out on top of the Pacific Division pillow fight.

I’ve questioned Knoblauch’s line combinations at forward recently, but you have to give credit where it’s due — he found a mix of Roslovic, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Zach Hyman that has been red-hot, and credit is also due to the head coach for putting the blender away and mostly sticking with these three players on the second line for close to three games now.

Over the last three wins, the line has combined for four goals, with Roslovic scoring three —including a nice rush sequence last game where Hyman scooped up the puck and found Roslovic, who went five-hole to score his 20th of the season.

While the Oilers’ power play hasn’t clicked (more on that next), the Roslovic–Nugent-Hopkins–Hyman combination has been a big reason the Oilers have banked six of the last six points.

The biggest area the Oilers are struggling with without Draisaitl in the lineup is definitely the power play, having scored only two goals on their last 24 attempts.

That said, they’ve looked better than in their earlier PP attempts without Draisaitl — they’re not as passive and are moving the puck much better — but as Baggedmilk recently put it, “Either way, teams are clearly looking for Bouchard to be the shooter with Draisaitl on the shelf, and we’re going to need some kind of adjustments for the last eight games.”

The Oilers’ power play starts with a couple of quick passes, then looks for the “Bouch bomb,” but so does the opposition, which has been doing an excellent job of clogging the lane. That said, they’ve primarily used Savoie as a replacement for Draisaitl, and as hot as he has been lately, I would swap him out for Roslovic instead.

Why? For one, Roslovic is on one of his hot streaks, scoring three goals in his last three games. Also, the Oilers need more shooting options that can score from distance beyond Bouchard, and whatever goes into the mechanics of Roslovic’s shot, it seems to come off the stick with a bit more ‘pop’ than most, enough to fool netminders. Moreover, last game against the Ducks, we saw that when Roslovic was on the second PP unit, he had the puck in a not-so-dangerous spot, elected to fire, but ripped it off the post.

That said, as you may know, I like silver linings if there’s one to be had. For the Oilers — who many deemed a one-trick pony relying solely on their power play — they’ve been winning games even without their usual lethal man advantage, thanks to strong five-on-five play, their PK unit coming up clutch, and their goaltenders making some big saves.

Still, if the Oilers can fine-tune their power play, look out.

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