Nielson’s Notes: Oilers-Avalanche Edition

Don’t let a 4-1 loss ruin what as a pretty darn good road trip for the @Edmonton Oilers. They come home with six of a possible ten points, and in my opinion, the six points they picked up were the most important ones available on the trip. Seven of ten would have been excellent but six of ten is still very good, he happy with this roadie folks.

@Mikko Koskinen was excellent the entire night, he didn’t get ANY help from the team in front of him in the third period. As good as he was throughout the game I thought his first ten minutes were the most important. He made some big saves as the team attempted to find their legs. His puck tracking was excellent in the first period.

I’m not saying Khaira’s moustache deserves all the credit for his recent success but I’m not, not saying it. Jujhar has four goals in his last four games played and I really liked how he stuck with it on his goal last night. He had the puck in the corner and tried to get it back to the point but fanned on the pass so he just said to hell with it and took it to the net instead and it paid off. He needs to keep the ‘stache

@Ryan Graves hammered @Alex Chiasson and the hit was so damn good that even Oilers fans were impressed. Call me old school but it was nice to see a good, hard, clean check like that — it’s a lost art. Chiasson didn’t return to the game so hopefully he’s okay. He was around the net in the first period of the game. It was a classic suicide pass from Larsson and also ended up being his final pass of the game.

Just moments after Chiasson was crushed Larsson took an elbowing penalty that ended up being called five minutes and a game misconduct. When I first saw 5:00 on the clock I thought Larsson must have caught him with a dirty butt end but that was not the case at all. The officials reviewed the play and still got it wrong. Sad.

I wonder if officials around the league have been told to cut down on elbowing penalties after an elbow on Rasmus Dahlin went uncalled but did end up leading to a suspension earlier in the week. I don’t really see any other reason they review that play and still deem it worth of a game misconduct.

Not only did the second-best penalty killing unit in the league kill off the five minute major they also killed off two minutes of 5-on-3 after an ill-advised penalty by Leon Draisaitl. The Oilers PK came into the game with the highest percentage in franchise history.

I really liked the jump and give a damn that Josh Archibald brought to the table. In a perfect world, he’d start contributing offensively but for now, he serves a purpose as a penalty killer and a spark plug.

This might have been the worst combined game that McDavid and Draisaitl have played this season. They were pretty much a non-factor the entire game. I mentioned it on twitter and these were some of the replies.

Yeah, they are both rattled because of Kozari. If people can get rattled at beer league because of refs imagine the magnitude when it’s professionals and when it’s the same god damn ref constantly screwing you over.

It’s almost as if playing 4 minutes of OT last game might not have been the best idea…

I think them not playing a bunch in the 2nd cause of the PK time took them out of the game early.

The officials changed this game…hate to say it, but they created the momentum after the hit. After that the Oilers legs and players were gone. Just bad luck tonight.

I’m pretty sure the officials didn’t rattle them enough to have it affect their play. They just had two days off so they shouldn’t have been tired. I think we just need to understand that even the best players in the world will have the odd off night. The good news for the Oilers is that it doesn’t happen very often.

This Colorado club has been without Rantanen and Landeskog for an extended period of time and they’ve managed to remain right in the thick of the race in the Central Division. I’ll be very surprised if the Avs end up missing the post-season and keep in mind they have the cap space to add a significant piece prior to the trade deadline.

You should be very excited about the upcoming home and home with the Canucks. Vancouver is not afraid to trade chances and have the skill to make things extremely entertaining. @Elias Pettersson is the best player in Canada not named Connor or Leon and Quinn Hughes is having a phenomenal rookie season with 21 points in 25 games. I could see the two clubs combing for at least seven goals in each of the games.