With Friday night’s game in Vancouver getting postponed, the Oilers have now had a full week off since they last played. They’ll head to Winnipeg on Saturday night for a Hockey Night in Canada match with the Jets.

1. The Oilers have 14 games left on their schedule for the 2021 regular season. There’s a fair chance that not all of those games are played, as Edmonton and Vancouver have four meetings left and the Canucks might not be able to finish their schedule. Regardless, the important head-to-heads the Oilers have left are the ones between Winnipeg and Montreal. Those will dictate where the Oilers finish in the standings, who they get to play in the first round, and whether or not they have home-ice advantage.

2. Montreal currently sits in fourth place in the Canadian Division, seven points back of the Oilers with two games in hand. The Habs have been scuffling as of late with just one win in their last five outings. Edmonton has four more games against Montreal on the schedule. Simply going 2-2 in those games would more than likely bury the Habs in fourth. Making up seven points in the standings in one month is a very tall task. The Habs would have to sweep their four games with the Oilers in order to jump them.

3. And then there’s Winnipeg, who’s red-hot right now. The Jets have won five of their last six games and they just came off of a commanding 5-2 win over the Maple Leafs. The Jets are five points up on the Oilers but Edmonton has two games in hand on them. Winnipeg has also climbed to within just three points of the Leafs for the top spot in the division. After Saturday’s game with the Oilers, the Jets will kick off a three-game set with the Leafs that will play a key role in determining who wins this division. If Edmonton can sweep their remaining three games with Winnipeg, they might be able to work their way into that conversation too. Catching Toronto is probably a stretch at this point but Edmonton can still jump Winnipeg if they do well in the remaining head-to-head.

4. The Oilers have done well against the Jets thus far, having won four of the six meetings between the two teams in 2021. The back-to-back wins Edmonton pulled off over Winnipeg back in mid-March when the team was traversing a difficult, jam-packed schedule were very impressive. That was especially the case with the second leg of the back-to-back that featured Edmonton climbing back after going down 2-0 in the first period and winning 4-2. Those two losses represent the only time this season that the Jets have dropped consecutive games in regulation.

5. Earlier in the season, I viewed the Jets as much more of a top-heavy team than they’ve turned out to be. In 2019-20, they got virtually all of their offence from a core of five players, not too dissimilar from the Oilers. But, in 2021, the Jets have found some depth scoring to take the pressure off their top line of Nik Ehlers, Mark Scheifele, and Kyle Connor. Andrew Copp has broken out with 14 goals, Paul Stastny has had a fine season with 12 goals, and bottom-sixers Mason Appelton, Mathieu Perreault, and Adam Lowry have nine, nine, and eight goals respectively. All told, Winnipeg will end the season with 10 different forwards eclipsing the 10-goal plateau, which is a 15-goal pace in a normal, 82-game season. Five Jets scored more than 15 goals last season.

6. While the Jets boast a strong, deep offence, their blueline has unsurprisingly been a weakness. This is covered up quite a bit by strong goaltending from reigning Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck and backup Laurent Brossoit, who have a .919 save percentage in all situations as a duo, but the Jets are one of the worst teams in the league at suppressing high-danger chances against. Per Natural Stat Trick, only the Anaheim Ducks have allowed more high-danger chances than Winnipeg this season, and the Jets also have the second-worst expected goals against (based on shot volume and quality) in the league this season. They’re worse than the likes of Ottawa and Buffalo because they’re allowing their opponents to have nine or ten high-danger chances at even strength per game.

7. Based on Edmonton’s results against Winnipeg this year, that all checks out. The Oilers have scored five goals against the Jets once, four goals three times, three goals once, and two goals once. That’s only one game where you can really say that Winnipeg did a good job at suppressing Edmonton’s offence. As I said, the Jets have a strong, deep offence, but I trust the Oilers to shut down Winnipeg’s offence much more than I expect to see the Jets’ shoddy blueline to be able to deal with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

8. Of course, another thing to note is that the Oilers have been successful against the Jets in their head-to-head this season with Ryann Nugent-Hopkins in the lineup, and they’ll be going into this game shorthanded as he isn’t travelling with the team. The word is RNH is dealing with a concussion and we don’t yet know when he’ll be ready to return. It’ll be interesting to see if Dave Tippett opts to maintain the McDavid-Draisaitl combo when facing Winnipeg. McDavid and Draisaitl have played 261 minutes together at even strength this season and are outscoring opponents by a whopping 30-to-12. A lot of that is against Ottawa but, again, I don’t think Winnipeg’s defence will be any better at shutting down elite talent than the Senators were.