GDB Game Notes: Edmonton Oilers @ Winnipeg Jets

The Oilers are back on the road after back-to-back wins at home. They’ll carry their 7-1 record into Winnipeg to face a Jets team that has lost three games in a row. Here are your game day notes.

1. The Jets have been one of the league’s worst teams at keeping the puck out of the net this season. Through nine games, they’ve allowed 33 goals against, which is an average of 3.67 goals-per-game. They have a lot of offensive fire power to help compensate, but the team’s completely decimated blueline has made it difficult for the Jets to stop their opponents from scoring goals.

2. It’s incredible how much Winnipeg’s blueline dropped off from last season. They traded @Jacob Trouba to New York because he wasn’t interested in signing an extension and they let @Tyler Myers walk to sign a big free-agent contract in Vancouver. The big surprise, though, came when @Dustin Byfuglien said he was contemplating retirement right before the start of the season. @Josh Morrissey is the only top-four defenceman from last year’s Jets team currently on the roster.

3. The loss of Byfuglien, Trouba, and Myers has forced Winnipeg to roll with one of the worst looking bluelines in the NHL. Morrissey and Dimitri Kulikov are the team’s two veteran defencemen, @Neal Pionk, @Carl Dahlstrom, and @Tucker Poolman have fewer than 200 NHL games played between them, and Ville Heinola is the team’s first-round pick from 2019.

4. Heinola has actually been incredibly impressive thus far considering nobody expected him to be playing in the NHL this quickly. The 2019 20th-overall pick is just 18 years old playing in North America for the first time but he’s managed to keep his head above water. Through six games, he’s logging 19:29 minutes per game and has a positive differential in both on-ice shot attempts and goals. He’s also chipped in with a goal and three assists, making him the early leader in points among players from the 2019 draft class.

5. Beyond losing three of their top-four defencemen this off-season, the Jets are also without @Bryan Little, one of the team’s top defensive forwards. Back in the pre-season, Little was blindsided by a hit from Luke Kunin of the Minnesota Wild and has missed the first nine games of the regular season. Without Little, the Jets were forced to move both @Andrew Copp and @Adam Lowry up the lineup into bigger roles than they’re used to playing.

6. All told, the Jets have allowed more goals than anybody else this season. They’ve also allowed the second-most shots in the league so far. They’ve allowed 300 shots against through their first nine games, which is more than 30 shots against per game. The only team that has allowed more shots is the Vegas Golden Knights, but Marc-Andre Fleury has been excellent. The Jets, on the other hand, have an .890 team save percentage.

7. Connor Hellebuyck, who we’ll see tonight, has been solid. Through six starts, the 2018 Vezina Trophy runner-up has posted a .919 save percentage, which is good enough to keep the Jets and their depleted defence in games. Laurent Brossoit, who had a breakout season last year, has struggled, posting an .850 save percentage in his first three starts. Hellebuyck faced the most shots against in the league last season (2051) and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case again this season.

8. We have ourselves a massive special teams mismatch tonight that heavily favours the Oilers. Edmonton’s power-play is rolling, having scored on 10 of 24 opportunities. The Jets’ penalty kill, predictably, has been terrible. They’ve allowed goals on seven of 16 power-play opportunities and they own far and away the worst penalty kill percentage in the league at 56.3 percent. One thing going for the Jets is their discipline, as they’ve taken just 16 penalties in 10 games, but if they get into any penalty trouble tonight, the Oilers will have a great opportunity to continue flashing their dominant power play.

9. Edmonton’s 7-1 start on the season mirrors their start in 2016-17. The team won their first two games that year, dropped their third, and then went on a five-game winning streak to bring them to 7-1. After that, though, they dropped three in a row, won two in a row, and then went on a big five-game losing streak to sit at 9-8-1 in mid-November. The nice thing about a good start is it affords teams the ability to not be buried by a slump. Every team is going to get cold at some point during the season, but if you build up a nice cushion in the standings, those cold streaks won’t completely ruin your season.

10. The 14 of 16 possible points banked is huge for the Oilers. Their mini two-game trip against Winnipeg and Minnesota are very winnable games and they need to capitalize in order to keep banking these points before the schedule gets more difficult. If Edmonton can win both of these games, they’ll start their season with 18 of 20 possible points in the standings. Last year, 90 points got Colorado the final playoff seed in the Western Conference. That was a bit lower than usual, so assume 94 points gets you in. If Edmonton can bank wins against Winnipeg and Minnesota, it would mean they only need to pick up 76 points in their final 72 games in order to meet that threshold. That’s just a little better than a .500 record the rest of the way. The key is banking these early points in winnable games.

11. The Western Conference has been very surprising early on. Colorado still hasn’t lost in regulation, two surprise teams in Edmonton and Anaheim sit second and third, last year’s top-seed Calgary has been mediocre to start, and two supposed contenders in Dallas and San Jose have been awful. I think we can count out Minnesota and Los Angeles, but I’m not ready to write off any of Dallas, San Jose, or Calgary, especially after watching what St. Louis did in the second half last year. I have a feeling the standings will be unusually tight this year, meaning games like this against a team likely in wild-card contention is really important. It’s only October so it’s kind of weird to say this, but a game against a middle-of-the-pack team like Winnipeg really is a four-point game.

12. @Sam Gagner was recalled from AHL Bakersfield yesterday as @Gaetan Haas was sent down to get more ice time. Gagner had to take a flight from Bakersfield into Thunder Bay and then take a bus to Winnipeg because Winnipeg doesn’t have an airport. What an exhausting day for Sammy.