The bright side

• First and foremost, the Oilers won two games in one night against the Flames. I don’t care that it was pre-season. Beating the Flames is always a good thing. Beating them twice at the same time? Woof!
• A handful of new guys — Kailer Yamamoto, Ryan Strome, and Yohann Auvitu — buried their first goals for the Oilers tonight.
• I still think Yamamoto is too young and small to rush into the NHL, but it’s hard to ignore his skill. He looked like a veteran scorer burying his goal off of a Flames turnover and certainly adds a slippery element to the Oilers’ attack.
• Auvitu is an interesting one. Nobody thought much of this signing because Auvitu isn’t a household name, but here’s a low-key solid player who makes an excellent first pass and plays the position very well. His puck moving ability will be a welcomed sight on this Oilers blueline and he could be a surprisingly effective player this year. His first showing was very impressive tonight.
• Strome looked solid alongside McDavid and Maroon on the top line. Obviously, because, well, who doesn’t look good with McDavid? Especially when you’re playing Calgary’s B squad. But still, on multiple occasions Strome added another big body that could crash the net, which should bode well as McDavid is going to get pucks on net.
• Jujhar Khaira was all over the place in the road game against Calgary’s A squad. He’s a big body who skates well and uses his muscle and could be a very pleasant surprise on Edmonton’s fourth line.
• I thought Ethan Bear and Caleb Jones looked calm and poised tonight. You didn’t hear their names much, which is generally a good thing for defencemen. They’re interesting prospects to watch in the AHL this season.

The face palmers

• A lot of people were complaining that the streams didn’t work. Mine (the home game) cut a couple times but worked largely fine, but a dozen people were in the Oilersnation Twitter mentions saying it wouldn’t start. Dan had the away stream cut out on him with a few minutes to go in the third period. Good times!
• There were a lot of penalties called tonight. Like, a lot. In the home game, Calgary was penalized 10 times and Edmonton was called five times. In the road game, Calgary got eight penalties and Edmonton got nine. All told, both teams combined for 31 penalties. I mean, I’m not going to complain too much about this. I was a fan of where the league was at right out of the 2004-05 lockout where everything was called for a penalty and scoring went through the roof and skill was able to shine through. But still, this was a little much. Multiple times minor stick infractions were called and it resulted in a weird, sloppy game without much rhythm.
• One guy I didn’t find impressive was Jesse Puljujarvi. He didn’t win many, if any, battles against the Flames tonight and had some ugly puck luck on the power play. He’s such a big, skilled player it’s easy to notice when he isn’t doing anything out there.
• Otherwise… Meh. I don’t want to complain too much about two wins in one night. The home game was pretty sluggish, but I blame that on all of the penalties and the fact the Oilers were playing Calgary’s junk squad and didn’t want to run up the score.

Scoring summary

Highlights and #content