Does anyone else remember the Jacques Lemaire era of the Minnesota Wild? I couldn’t stand those teams. Not only did they run the Oilers’ show for years — I still have nightmares about Marian Gaborik roasting Edmonton regularly — but they also played the boring trap style of hockey that everybody hates. Sure, the trap can be effective, but literally nobody wants to watch it. As a result of those boring beatdowns from the old Northwest Division, I cannot stand the Minnesota Wild, and they still bother me to this day, even though no one is still around from those days. As a result, I’m labeling this as a must-win game for the Oilers if for no other reason than to make a young Baggedmilk happy. Let’s talk about it.

1. If it wasn’t for the ridiculous 14-1 run by the Winnipeg Jets, the Minnesota Wild would sit atop the NHL standings. Despite having $14.7 million in dead cap space from the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts, they’re still finding a way to not only stay competitive but actually excel. Outside of a few big deals like Kirill Kaprizov ($9 million), Matt Boldy ($7 million), and Jared Spurgeon ($7.25 million), you look around the Wild’s roster and see a bunch of quality contracts for players who are significantly outplaying them.

2. Speaking of Kirill Kaprizov, the guy is having an outstanding season so far. His 13 goals rank fourth in the NHL, while the 33 points he’s produced sit in second place behind only Nathan MacKinnon. What’s certainly notable about Kaprizov’s early success this season is that only two of his goals have come on the power play, meaning the Oilers need to be aware of where he is at all times or risk getting burned.

3. To make matters worse, tonight’s probable starter, Filip Gustavsson, sits atop the NHL leaderboard in goals-against average with a sparkling 2.07, while his .926 save percentage ranks second behind former Oiler Anthony Stolarz. In 14 appearances so far this season — despite losing three of his last five starts — Gustavsson is rocking a 9-3-2 record that includes one shutout and a goalie goal from back in mid-October. The Minnesota netminder scored with nine seconds left in the Wild’s 4-1 win against the St. Louis Blues, making him the 15th goalie to score in the NHL and just the 10th to do so by shooting it into an empty net (the others were the last to touch an own-goal).

4. Even though this is only the first of three meetings between the Oilers and Wild this season, I hope we get to see Marc-Andre Fleury between the pipes either tonight or at any point in this season series as he works through his final season in the NHL. Despite playing in only four games so far, the soon-to-be 40-year-old netminder has won three of those starts and has put up some decent — but not great — numbers while he’s at it. With a 2.70 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage, Fleury has been mostly solid so far in his limited action. I personally think it would be great to see a future Hall of Famer at least one more time before he retires.

5. Digging into the special teams a little bit, the Wild’s power play ranks 13th in the NHL and is humming along at a reasonable 20.0% clip. Their penalty kill, however, hasn’t been quite as strong, ranking 24th in the league with a 76.2% success rate. Of course, here in Edmonton, we would probably kill for those numbers right now as the Oilers’ power play is still struggling to get going at 17.3% — good for 22nd overall — while the penalty kill is ranked 30th at 68.6%, despite recent improvement.

6. The good news is that the Oilers’ penalty kill has handled 12 consecutive penalties over their last five games. Given how bad the PK was to start the year — and even two weeks ago — seeing the boys have some success while shorthanded is definitely something to celebrate. While there are still plenty of issues to address in the defensive zone, I cannot stress how impactful it will be if the penalty kill can get back to a level that isn’t causing nightly damage. Great run happening right now.

7. Zach Hyman left Tuesday’s game against the Senators in the second intermission and did not return to the bench to finish the game. Kris Knoblauch didn’t offer much of an update in his post-game presser, so we’ll have to wait and see whether or not he’ll be available to play against Minnesota. Same goes for Viktor Arvidsson, who was listed as a 50/50 shot to play against Nashville last week but has yet to get into any game action since. While Arvidsson did join the team on their three-game eastern Canadian road trip, he didn’t play in any of those three games, nor did we get many updates regarding why not.

8. With 15 points (6G, 9A) in his last six games, Connor McDavid is starting to go supernova, and I couldn’t think of a scarier trend for opposing defenders and goaltenders. That said, outside of him and Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers are still struggling mightily to get pucks in the net. If you take away the 23 goals scored by Draisaitl (13) and McDavid (9), the rest of the roster is only producing 1.6 goals per game, which isn’t nearly good enough given what we expected from them. Whether we’re talking about Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jeff Skinner, Adam Henrique, or Zach Hyman (if he plays), there are a bunch of forwards who need to pick it up and start chipping in.

9. Despite having 33 players who played for both the Minnesota Wild and Edmonton Oilers, there are none in tonight’s contest, meaning we can’t even talk about some kind of revenge game angle. That said, we also know how much former Oilers have punished us over the years, so maybe not having any old friends in the Minnesota lineup is a good thing. In case you’re wondering, the most recent former Oiler to play for the Wild is our old friend Jujhar Khaira, who played a single game with them them before being assigned to the Syracuse Crunch in the American Hockey League,

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