Edmonton Oilers to meet Colorado Avalanche in Western Conference Finals
By Zach Laing
1 year agoThe Edmonton Oilers’ date for the Western Conference Finals: the Colorado Avalanche.
The speedy team from Denver finished off their second-round series against the St. Louis Blues Friday night with a 3-2, buzzer-beater win. J.T. Compher scored two goals for the Avs, while Darren Helm scored the game-winner with six seconds left.
Game one in the Oilers – Avalanche series kicks off Tuesday night with a 6 p.m. MT start time. Game two goes Thursday night at the same time.
In fact, as has been scheduled thus far, the first four games are all 6 p.m. MT games. Good news for fans given the plethora of late games in these playoffs.
Games three and four will come to Edmonton on Saturday, June 4th, and June 6th.
The Oilers and Avalanche met three times this season. Their first matchup came on March 21st when the teams met in Colorado where Nathan MacKinnon scored the game-winning 3-2 goal in overtime. Game two came on April 9th with this one needing a shootout for Colorado to secure a 2-1 win.
The final game between the two fell on April 22nd, and saw the Oilers win 6-3 in thanks to an Evander Kane hat trick.
Here’s how the 5×5 numbers looked between the two clubs for those games:
| Game | Team | TOI | CF | CA | CF% | GF | GA | GF% | xGF | xGA | xGF% | SCF | SCA | SCF% | HDCF | HDCA | HDCF% | SH% | SV% | PDO |
| 2022-03-21 – Oilers 2, Avalanche 3 OT | Edmonton Oilers | 46.43333333 | 41 | 41 | 50 | 1 | 0 | 100 | 1.15 | 1.45 | 44.26 | 11 | 22 | 33.33 | 3 | 5 | 37.5 | 5.26 | 100 | 1.053 |
| 2022-04-09 – Avalanche 2, Oilers 1 SO | Edmonton Oilers | 54.03333333 | 59 | 53 | 52.68 | 1 | 1 | 50 | 2.44 | 2.17 | 52.99 | 27 | 23 | 54 | 14 | 3 | 82.35 | 2.78 | 96.55 | 0.993 |
| 2022-04-22 – Avalanche 3, Oilers 6 | Edmonton Oilers | 41.03333333 | 43 | 38 | 53.09 | 5 | 2 | 71.43 | 1.91 | 1.41 | 57.54 | 25 | 19 | 56.82 | 11 | 4 | 73.33 | 22.73 | 85.71 | 1.084 |
This has all the attributes of what should be an incredible series. The high-flying Avs have tremendous offensive talents in guys like Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Nazem Kadri and Cale Makar, while the Oilers will punch back with the tremendous Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Evander Kane and Zach Hyman.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.
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