The win streak may be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start a new one tonight at Rogers Place when the Edmonton Oilers take on the Florida Panthers in the late slot on Hockey Night in Canada. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s game day.

The weird thing about the Oilers looking to get back in the win column is that they played very well on Thursday night against Tampa Bay, but they couldn’t close things out and collect the two points. Outside the first 10 minutes of the game, the boys were by far the better hockey team and probably deserved the victory had it not been for the sizeable difference in performances between the crease. Not to harp on Stu’s performance all that much, but Andrei Vasilevskiy vastly outplayed him, and that difference was very much the reason we weren’t talking about a nine-game winning streak. So, to have an effort that strong get wasted by poor goaltending was a frustrating way to lose the game. The good news is that the boys have a chance to right the ship against a Florida Panthers team that’s been shut out in each of their last two games, both 4-0 losses to the Kraken and Canucks respectively.

It’s important to know that I’m not saying beating the Panthers will be easy or something. As much as I believe that the Panthers are beatable — especially right now — the reality is that they’re going to be coming into this thing with a bug up their butts after getting blown out the last two games. Not to mention, that team has a handful of former Flames on the roster, so we should just assume that they’ll want to show the Oilers up as a default setting. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but by no means should anyone think this rematch after the 5-3 loss from three weeks ago will be a lay up. That said, I also believe that our boys have a damned good chance to avenge that loss if they can keep playing at the level they have been since returning home from the road trip. Even though you can’t expect the Oilers to win every game, they’ll absolutely win a tonne of them if they play with the kind of fundamentals and urgency as we’ve seen over the last nine games.

Let’s see what the numbers say…

RNH – McDavid – Hyman
Janmark – Draisaitl – Foegele
Kane – McLeod – Brown
Gagner – Hamblin – Ryan

Nurse – Ceci
Ekholm – Bouchard
Kulak – Desharnais

Pickard

Calvin Pickard gets the start against the Panthers, and he’ll need to give the same effort as we got against the Devils last weekend if the Oilers are going to get back in the win column. The good news is that Pickard has been mostly steady any time he’s manned the crease, and I’m hopeful that the streak will continue again today. If the guy doesn’t want to go back to Bakersfield any time soon then coming up with another strong performance would be a huge step in keeping him around a little bit longer.

Verhaeghe – Lundell – Reinhart
Rodrigues – Bennett – Tkachuk
Luostarinen – Stenlund – Cousins
Gadjovich – Lorentz – Lomberg

Forsling – Ekblad
Mikkola – Montour
Ekman-Larsson – Kulikov

Bobrovsky

Through the month of December so far, the Panthers are playing .500 hockey and have been outscored by a 19 to 16 margin. Over their last two outings, however, the Panthers have given up eight goals while scoring zero, and I’d bet the farm that they’ll be looking to end that streak in a very real way.

Game Day Prediction: The Oilers get back in the win column with a 4-2 win over the Panthers.

Obvious Game Day Prediction: Connor McDavid keeps the point streak alive with another multi-point night.

Not-So-Obvious Game Day Prediction: Cody Ceci finds the back of the net for the first time since October of 2022.