It has been eight months and three days since the Florida Panthers broke the hearts of the Edmonton Oilers and handed them a crushing 2-1 loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Tonight, the Oilers return to Florida hoping to end a four-game losing streak. I’m sure seeing the dressing room and the rink will bring back painful memories, but they could use it as motivation to get back on track and win a big game.

Edmonton has had a lot of regular season success in Florida. The Oilers are 6-2 since drafting Connor McDavid in 2015 and they are 12-2 in their last 14 visits dating back to December 7th, 2002. Tonight’s game will be emotional for the Oilers who lost that game on June 24th, 2024. Zach Hyman’s post-game speech to his teammates and the utter devastation on the face of the players is something they’d rather forget, but never will. It stays with a player forever.

Will it fuel them tonight? Hopefully, because the Oilers are in a funk. They haven’t been very competitive in the three games of this road trip, losing 6-3 in Philadelphia, 7-3 in Washington and 4- 1 in Tampa Bay. They’ve struggled in every facet of the game.

Too many giveaways.

Too many rush chances against.

Too many errant passes.

Not enough sustained offensive zone time.

They’ve been outshot 103-67. In their first 55 games of the season, they outshot teams by an average of 32.6 to 26.7.

They haven’t been connected defensively. Their neutral zone puck management has been ugly. Offensively they’ve generated very little. And even though they’ve been outchanced and outworked, their goalies still allowed an untimely goal in each of the past two games. Would it have changed the outcome? I’m not sure, but the Jacob Chychrun goal in Washington and the Brandon Hagel goal in Tampa Bay needed to be stopped.

Outside of Leon Draisaitl, every player needs to be much better tonight if the Oilers hope to avoid their first five-game losing streak since December of 2021, when they lost six-consecutive games in regulation.

— Leon Draisaitl has goals in six-consecutive games. He can tie his career high if he scores a goal tonight. If he picks up one point, he’ll extend his point streak to 10 games. It will be the 11th streak of 10+ games in his career. He’d tie Sidney Crosby and Nikita Kucherov for second most among active players trailing only McDavid, who has 16 streaks of 10+ games.

— McDavid has gone eight games without a point 5×5 — the longest stretch of his career. He hasn’t been on the ice for a 5×5 goal in his last six, which ties his career high. It is an odd stretch for McDavid. Edmonton has been outscored 10-0 in its last six games with McDavid on the ice 5×5. Wild. I sense both streaks will end tonight. “I’d be lying if I said I’ve felt good out there,” said McDavid this morning. “It has been a big emotional week (after 4 Nations), it has been tough to get going, which isn’t an excuse, so I need to find a way to get going.”

— McDavid has 698 assists in 697 regular season games. He needs two assists in his next three games to become only the third player with 700 assists at or before 700 games played. Wayne Gretzky did it in 478 games while Mario Lemieux needed 579 games. Paul Coffey (768 games), Adam Oates (781) and Peter Stastny (784) are the only other players to reach 700 assists in their first 824 games played.

— Darnell Nurse is injured and won’t play. Troy Stecher and Ty Emberson will be the third pair with Stecher playing the left side. Nurse didn’t play for the final 9:23 on Tuesday in Tampa Bay. I just re-watched his final shift of the game, and he wasn’t engaged in a battle and didn’t give or receive a hit. Nothing on that shift looked like it led to an injury, so it must have been from earlier in the game.

— Yesterday, I wrote Stan Bowman needs to make some moves before next Friday to help the team. I understand the uncertainty of Evander Kane’s return date is a challenge, but let’s say he does return either in March or April — that can’t stop the Oilers from making trades. Ken Holland found ways to make trades when his team had been in LTIR since the start of the season, or when they had very little cap space, like the Oilers would if Kane returns before the end of the season. Bowman and management need to get creative. Find ways to improve the team and if he has to move out some salary to do it, then make it happen. The Kane situation isn’t ideal, but many teams have made deals the past three years with limited cap space.

RNH – McDavid – Hyman
J. Skinner – Draisaitl – Arvidsson
Janmark – Henrique – Brown
Podkolzin – Kapanen – Perry

Ekholm – Bouchard
Kulak – Klingberg
Stecher – Emberson

Skinner

Kris Knobluach will try both Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson in the top six. I think we can agree Matt Savoie hasn’t been a problem in his three games. I thought he looked good on the eye test and his possession numbers are better than most of the forwards the past three games. Knoblauch is going with his veterans, and we’ll see how they respond. Kapanen lining up at centre is odd. In his eight full NHL seasons, he’s only taken more than 15 face offs in a season twice. He took 38 in 2023 and 79 last year. He’s never been a regular centre. Vasily Podkolzin has taken 49 draws this year, mainly because Leon Draisaitl gets kicked out of draws often. Viktor Arvidsson has taken 37. My point is Kapanen has never been a centre. I doubt he takes draws but even changing on the fly and having him play centre seems odd. Savoie has more centre experience in the AHL and WHL.

I don’t think the fourth line centre will decide this game, I just am a bit perplexed by the decision.

Verhaeghe – Barkov – Reinhart
Samoskevich – Bennett – Rodrigues
Luostarinen – Lundell – Boqvist
Greer – Nosek – Gadjovich

Forsling – Ekblad
Mikkola – Kulikov
Balinskis – Schmidt

Bobrovsky

Matthew Tkachuk will miss another game and there is no timeline for his return. The Panthers and Oilers rosters look much different tonight than when the met in Game 7.

Edmonton is without Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod, Dylan Holloway, Derek Ryan, Cody Ceci, Philip Broberg and Nurse (injured).

The Panthers don’t have Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Brandon Montour, Vladimir Tarasenko, Kyle Okposo, Kevin Stenlund, Ryan Lomberg and Tkachuk (injured).

The Panthers are still very good, and the Oilers need to be much more engaged, composed and ready to play a full game to have any hopes of being the defending Cup champions.

GAME DAY PREDICTION: Oilers’ regular season success in Florida continues. They end the streak with a 3-2 win.

OBVIOUS GAME DAY PREDICTION: Oilers have one ghastly turnover that leads directly to a goal.

NOT-SO-OBVOIUS GAME DAY PREDICTION: Adam Henrique scores. He has five career goals v. Florida in 32 games and only has fewer goals against LA (4 in 35 games), Anaheim (2 in 12 GP), Seattle (1 on 7GP) and Utah (0 in 2GP). It is Henrique’s third goal in his last six games v. Florida after only scoring three in his first 27 games.