After a big win on the road against the @Vegas Golden Knights, the Oilers will be back in action on Sunday night for a game in Arizona against the Coyotes.

1. I mentioned in yesterday’s game notes against Vegas that a key to the Oilers’ success this year has been their ability to rebound after bad games. All season, they’ve killed the possibility of extended losing streaks because they’ve come back after bad losses with a strong effort. Yesterday was another one of those instances. After an ugly loss to the basement-dwelling Kings, the Oilers put up a very good effort on the road to beat the Golden Knights. A loss to L.A. followed by a back-to-back in Vegas and Arizona is a stretch that could have gotten ugly in recent years, but this Oilers team is different. Let’s see if they can keep it rolling with a tough match in Arizona.

2. The Oilers have had some pretty good scheduling fortune this year, so this will be just their second back-to-back they’ve played. The only other one came back in late October when they hit the road to play the Red Wings and Blue Jackets on back-to-back nights. They opened that stretch by losing to the Wings but then they immediately rebounded with a strong showing in Columbus.

3. The Coyotes are dealing with back-to-back of their own. They just beat the Kings 3-2 on the road in Los Angeles and they’re coming home tonight to host the Oilers. Arizona has also only had one back-to-back this season so far. It came in early November when they beat the last two Stanley Cup Champions, the Capitals and Blues, on the road.

4. That stretch, for me, proved that the Coyotes were legit this year. After beating the Oilers in Edmonton in the only meeting between the teams so far, Arizona went on their longest losing streak of the season, which lasted three games. It dropped them out of the playoffs for the time being, but beating St. Louis and Washington on the road back-to-back like that showed that they were the team that got off to a hot start, rather than the team that was struggling in a skid.

5. Arizona has been a team people have talked about breaking out for quite some time now and it seems it’s finally happened. Last season, they were quietly solid, finishing with a 39-35-8 record, just four points out of the playoffs. This generally wouldn’t be anything worth talking about, but Arizona did that well despite having more man games lost to injury than just about anybody else in the league.

6. @Antti Raanta, @Nick Schmaltz, @Christian Dvorak, @Michael Grabner, @Jason Demers, and @Jakob Chychrun all missed major time to injury last year and there wasn’t really a point in which the Coyotes could actually ice their ideal lineup. This year, save for a major injury to veteran defenceman @Niklas Hjalmarsson, the Coyotes are healthy and things are working for them. They’re 14-8-2 and they sit in second place in the Pacific Division, just three points back of the Oilers with a game in hand.

7. Arizona went out over the off-season and tried to address their scoring woes by acquiring Phil Kessel and @Carl Soderberg. They still aren’t a great offensive team, but they’ve improved over where they were at last year. The 2018-19 Coyotes finished 27th in the league in goals and nobody on the team hit the 20-goal plateau. This year, they’re 18th in the league in scoring. Adding Kessel and Soderberg while also having Schmaltz, Dvorak, and Grabner healthy has given Arizona some actual scoring depth.

8. The key to the team’s success ultimately comes down to keeping the puck out of the net. Arizona has allowed only 54 goals against this year, which ranks second in the league behind only the New York Islanders, who have played three fewer games. The Coyotes play a rigid defensive style, they kill penalties well, and both of their goalies are strong. The duo of Darcy Kuemper and Antti Raanta have a combined .931 save percentage. We’ll see Kuemper tonight, the better of the two, who has a .935 save percentage in 15 games.

9. Like last night, this is an early season four-point game for the Oilers. Wins within the division are paramount, especially against teams like Arizona who are more than likely going to be in the mix at the end of the season. After their win against Vegas, the Oilers are 5-2-1 against the Pacific Division. The Coyotes are 4-1-1 against the Pacific thus far.

10. Here is the Oilers goal scoring (points in parenthesis) this season compared to last year and the Coyotes through 25 games via Gregor.

11. Gregor added that the Coyotes “rest of forwards” is a bit misleading because Nick Schmaltz, Phil Kessel and Clayton Keller are in that group currently. They each have four goals, and for this specific stats category, we are going by top-five goal scorers. Currently, @Michael Grabner (6) and @Lawson Crouse (5) have more goals than those three, but they only have eight points respectively. Schmaltz has 18, while Kessel and Keller have 14. So the point totals for their forwards looks deceiving. Conor Garland (10) is the only forward on their team with more than six goals. The Coyotes are winning with stifling defence. If they could score more often they’d crush teams. Both teams are +11 in GF-GA… Edmonton sits at 80-69, while Arizona is at 65-54.

We’ve upgraded every aspect of this year’s gear and we cannot wait for you guys to check it out! The 2019 Blackout collection is coming soon and available only at NationGear.ca.