The Oilers might be about to get some welcome – and oh so rare – good news on the injury front. According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie, Gagner is “getting much closer to a return” and McKenzie hints that the Oilers’ centre could be back basically any day now.

McKenzie’s tweet comes four days after the Edmonton Journal’s Joanne Ireland offered the most recent update on Gagner’s health.

Zack Kassian’s reckless use of his stick ended up breaking Gagner’s jaw and leaving his face a bit of a mess:

The injury came on September 21; at the time the expectation was that Gagner would miss six-to-eight weeks, putting his estimated time of return sometime around the first half of November. Roughly a week later, at the start of October, Gagner told the Journal’s Jim Matheson that he wanted that timeline down to four or five weeks; tomorrow will mark the fourth week since Gagner made that comment to Matheson.

Gagner has been practicing with the team for 10 days, now it’s just a matter of him being cleared to play.

How do the Oilers adjust their lines if Gagner is ready, for instance, to play against the Maple Leafs on Tuesday? Dallas Eakins could choose to stick him in the top-six immediately, displacing one of Mark Arcobello, Ales Hemsky or Nail Yakupov, or he could ease him in as a second centre on Boyd Gordon’s line.

After watching Mark Arcobello’s line struggle against the Kings’ Anze Kopitar (and in fairness, the whole team was struggling), I personally like the idea of bumping Gagner into the top-six and sticking Arcobello on Boyd Gordon’s line, like so:

Gagner gives the Oilers options, though the similarity of a bunch of these forwards makes constructing balanced lines difficult. The team is still better with him than without him.

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