The Edmonton Oilers kicked off their pre-season schedule with an afternoon game against the Winnipeg Jets. While it was a meaningless game overall, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to have the boys (kind of) back on my TV again.

As much as I don’t personally care about watching pre-season games, I was locked into this first one against the Jets. No, I still didn’t care about the score, but I got much more into it when I saw Ty Emberson, Connor Carrick, Josh Brown, and Travis Dermott were all playing. It’s not that I expected those guys to be studs in their first tune-up match or anything, but I also haven’t had the chance to watch any of them with any real consistency. Now that they’re Oilers and we need competent defending, this first pre-season game was the perfect time to sharpen our pencils and see what we’ve got here.

Now that we’ve had this first chance to watch them play, I thought all four of those d-men looked fine against the Jets’ farm team. But isn’t that how they should look against a lineup full of AHLers? Either way, I thought all three of the Oilers’ veteran defenders did a good job steering the baby Jets away from the danger areas and cleaning up any garbage that may have been lying around. They didn’t necessarily excel, but the three veterans all handled their business against weaker competition, which is exactly what we’d expect in that situation.

In the end, Emberson, Carrick, Brown, and Dermott all played a lot, and they all looked like players with experience at hockey’s highest level. I’d give you TOI numbers, but the NHL doesn’t track them right now, apparently, so you’ll have to trust me when I say all four were calm, steady, and mostly quiet defensively, which is what I wanted to see in this scenario. The tough part, of course, is they did it against a Jets team that had none of its regulars in the lineup, making it tricky to evaluate what happened out there. On one hand, it’s hard to complain about how they limited Winnipeg’s chances throughout the game. On the other, wouldn’t it have been fair to expect more? Look at me nitpicking already. Hockey is back!

1. Did anyone else feel like we are so back when the Jets scored on their first shot of the game only 17 seconds into the first period? Can’t just be me, right?

2. Sam O’Reilly tied the game early in the first period on a slick little move that saw him pick up a pass in flight before shifting the puck from his backhand to forehand and chipping a low shot through the goaltender. Who knows how high O’Reilly’s ceiling can be, but I appreciated his relentlessness on the puck whenever he was out there. On a night when he was quite noticeable, the 32nd overall pick from this past June scored a goal on one of his two shots on goal.

3. Raphael Lavoie gave the Oilers the 2-1 lead with a power play goal after he blasted a one-timer from the boards that beat Eric Comrie clean on the glove-hand side. I have Lavoie as a player with an outside chance of stealing a job, and picking up goals consistently in the pre-season would be a pretty damned good strategy for getting there. In his first game of the pre-season, Lavoie scored the PP goal to go along with four shots on goal and a +1 rating.

4. Cam Dineen picked up the OT winner after displaying some nice patience with the puck in the offensive zone. Dineen was able to work his way through traffic with possession before firing a puck across his body that beat Comrie down low on the far side. The game winner was Dineen’s second point of the game after he picked up a helper on Sam O’Reilly’s first period marker.

5. Vasily Podkolzin made his Oilers debut on night one of the pre-season, and the thing that stuck out to me was the way he pressured on the forecheck. If he sees a chance to get in on the defenceman, Podkolzin gets in on him quickly. I hope he does that consistently because I can see him shaking all kinds of pucks free for his linemates if that’s something he does consistently. Would I have liked to see him produce more opportunities offensively? Yes, but I really did appreciate the way he attacks the puck without hesitation.

6. I wonder how much pressure Matthew Savoie is putting on himself to impress at this first Oilers training camp. The Oilers traded a solid piece in Ryan McLeod to get him back in July, and that move came with all kinds of hype about what Savoie could be if he lives up to his potential.

7. If I’m being honest, I didn’t notice Mike Hoffman all that much and I can’t imagine I’m the only one to feel that way. Given his penchant for goal scoring and the quality of competition he was facing, I was hoping for more out of a guy that’s in town on a PTO and fighting to keep his career going.

8. Drake Caggiula was wearing an ‘A’ in game one, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me laugh. I know they have to give them out to players during the pre-season when the regulars aren’t in the lineup, but my stupid brain still found it amusing anyway.

9. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it should be illegal for pre-season games to go to overtime.

10. How can you not love seeing that the Oilers won 58.8% of the faceoffs? The people love pre-season faceoff wins.

11. Every year, I get someone to send me a picture of the beer/drink menu at Rogers Place when the season starts, and every year, I’m dumb enough to be surprised by the price increases. As you can see from the picture in the tweet above, it’s not exactly cheap to buy a bevvie or two these days, and Nation Citizens were pissed about it when I posted that same pic on our Instagram.