After disappointing losses to the Kings and Ducks this past weekend, the Edmonton Oilers are back home with one final matchup against the Utah Hockey Club left before the calendar flips to 2025. Can they wrap up the year with a better result against Utah? We’re only a few hours from finding out.
I can’t be the only one still salty about how the weekend games played out, right? The Oilers lost two Pacific Division matchups in a row and blew leads in both games, effectively surrendering three of four potential points they could have earned. I know we’re still in the first half of the 2024-25 campaign, but those are losses that cannot happen if this team has any hopes of winning the division when April rolls around. Losing is one thing, but blowing leads caused by a lack of effort is another story altogether.
The Oilers were playing very well before the Christmas break, but they’ve been equally poor since returning, and that problem needs to be solved today. The last thing anyone needs right now is to let this losing streak continue because of lacklustre efforts and seeming to think wins are given and not earned. At least, that was my takeaway after Sunday’s debacle against the Anaheim Ducks. How else would you describe getting so heavily outworked by one of the worst teams in the league?
From my side of the TV screen, the Oilers looked like they thought that game would be easy, and it wasn’t until the third period that they actually started skating. Do that against a hardworking team like Utah, and we’ll be destined for the same result. I don’t care that Utah played and lost last night in Seattle. If the Oilers aren’t ready to play from the moment the puck drops, they’ll be made to look like fools for the second consecutive game by a team on the latter half of a back-t0-back set.
The good news is that the Oilers already have the solution to this problem. If they really want to get back in the win column, all they have to do is get back to work and do it for more than a period or two. There were far too many stretches against the Kings and Ducks where the Oilers took their foot off the gas, and that wasn’t happening when they were rolling through teams earlier in the month. Get back to driving the pace of play instead of allowing the opponent to dictate it, and the Oil will be fine. I guess the problem is making sure that they remember that’s the game plan.
One thing the Oilers can’t allow is for bad habits from back in October to creep back into their game and further derail what was otherwise a fantastic month of December. This is one of those moments where the Oilers need to level up again and not allow a couple of bad games to turn into an extended losing streak. If they can do that, then folks will quickly forget just how bad those last two losses were. But if the boys can’t put together a full 60 on Tuesday against Utah and two losses turn into three, the upcoming two-day break between games could start getting pretty noisy around here.
Let’s see what the numbers say…

THE NUMBERS

OILERS
UTAH
RECORD
21-12-3
16-14-6
WIN/LOSS STREAK
L2
L4
LAST 10 GAMES
7-2-1
5-3-2
GOALS FOR
117
105
GOALS AGAINST
104
108
POWER PLAY%
23.7
22.6
PENALTY KILL%
76.5
80.5
AVG. SHOTS/FOR
31.8
27.3
AVG. SHOTS/AGAINST
26.4
28.6
TEAM SAVE%
.909
.916
CORSI FOR%
53.50
53.08
PDO
0.990
1.003
TEAM SHOOTING%
8.13
8.68
EXPECTED GOALS FOR%
53.21
51.88
Numbers courtesy of Natural Stat Trick (Sv%, CF%, PDO, Shooting%, xGF% all at 5×5)
  • The Oilers are 2-1-1 in their last four New Year’s Eve games, as they get set to take on Utah for the second of three meetings this season. The two clubs will wrap up their season series on March 18th at the Rogers Place.
  • Leon Draisaitl is riding an 11-game point streak (9G, 14A), which is tied for the 6th longest point streak of his career. Draisaitl’s longest point streak was 14 games, and ran from February 13th to March 11th, 2019, where he picked up 23 points (10G, 13A). With the pair of goals he scored on Sunday, Draisaitl registered his ninth consecutive 25-goal season, with only Jari Kurri having more in franchise history with 10.
  • Connor McDavid also extended his point streak to 11 games, with 21 points (3G, 18A) coming in that span. This is the 14th time that McDavid has had a point streak of at least 11 games, with his longest and most productive stretch being the 17 games between November 26th to Dec. 30th, 2022. In that span, the captain put up an incredible 37 points (16G, 21A). After a slow start by his own standards, McDavid has now registered 42 points (12G, 30A) in 23 games since November 6th, and leads all players in scoring since that date.
  • Zach Hyman finds himself on an eight-game point streak with 10 points (7G, 3A). What makes it a funny point streak is that they’ve all come in the days since Hyman was left off Canada’s 4 Nations Face-Off roster.
  • Looking at the special teams, the Oilers’ PK has gone 42-for-46 (91.3%) over the last 21 games. Not to be outdone, Edmonton’s power play has started to heat up over the last 14 games, going 13-for-36 and operating at 36.1%.

LINE COMBINATIONS

Oilers

Nugent-Hopkins – McDavid – Hyman
Podkolzin – Draisaitl – Arvidsson
Kapanen – Henrique – Brown
Janmark – Ryan – Perry
Ekholm – Bouchard
Nurse – Stecher
Kulak – Emberson
Skinner
What I’m most interested in seeing today is if Jeff Skinner will actually be a healthy scratch for the second straight game. He was the extra forward at practice again yesterday, and nobody seems to know what it will take to get him out of Kris Knoblauch’s doghouse. That’s not a great spot for a $3 million forward who was expected to chip in with some offence in the team’s top six.

Utah HC

Keller – Hayton – Schmaltz
McBain – Cooley – Guenther
Maccelli – Bjugstad – Crouse
Carcone – Stenlund – Kerfoot
Sergachev – Maatta
Cole – Kesselring
Valimaki – Kolyachonok
Vejmelka
The Utah Hockey Club played and lost last night in Seattle, which means they likely rolled into town quite late after an evening game in the Pacific time zone. If the Oilers can jump on Utah early, that might be the edge they need to take advantage of a tired team. That said, I also thought the same thing was true on Sunday against the Ducks, so what the hell do I know?

TONIGHT…

GDB Zach Hyman Up Photoshop Edmonton Oilers
Photoshop by Tom Kostiuk from Handmade by Tom
Game Day Prediction: The Oilers learn from their mistakes, and walk through Utah en route to a 5-1 victory.
Obvious Game Day Prediction: Make it another multi-point game from Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Not-So-Obvious Game Day Prediction: We heard rumblings yesterday that the Oilers are interested in extending Ty Emberson, and he rewards that chatter with his first goal as an Oiler.

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