How quickly the weather changes in Edmonton in March.
The Oilers dropped the first two games of their road trip last week to the lowly Buffalo Sabres and injured New Jersey Devils and the sky was falling. After wins against the New York Islanders and New York Rangers that salvaged the trip at two wins and two losses, the clouds have parted and the sun is shining again.
With the team’s final trip to the Eastern Conference during the regular season finished, the Oilers are now back in Edmonton for a stretch that’ll see them play five of six games at Rogers Place. They’ll begin a four-game homestand on Tuesday against the Utah Hockey Club.
1. After this stretch of games at home to end March, the Oilers will hit the road to play their fourth and final regular season game against the Vegas Golden Knights. They’re currently four points back of Vegas in the Pacific Division standings with the same amount of games played, so the goal for Edmonton over these next six games is to close the gap before facing the Golden Knights on April 1.
The Oilers will host Utah on Tuesday, the league-leading Winnipeg Jets on Thursday, the Seattle Kraken on Saturday, and then the Dallas Stars next Wednesday. They’ll play the Kraken in Seattle right after hosting the Stars on Thursday and then they’ll return home for a Hockey Night in Canada game against the Calgary Flames.
The Golden Knights will also play six games before hosting the Oilers at the beginning of April. They’re set to host the Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, and Tampa Bay Lightning, and then they’re going on the road to play the Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks, and Nashville Predators.
That’s a pretty light schedule for Vegas, so Edmonton needs to take care of business against the teams below them in the standings. The Jets and Stars are both tough teams but the Oilers should be able to handle Utah, Seattle, and Calgary.
2. The Utah Hockey Club has a 30-26-11 record in their first season in Salt Lake City and their modest .530 points percentage has them on pace to have a better finish than the Coyotes did during 17 of the 27 seasons they played in Arizona. The new team has also seen success in terms of fan turnout, with the 11,131-capacity Delta Center sold out for all of Utah’s games thus far.
The biggest issue for the Hockey Club since leaving the desert has been deciding on a name. “Yeti” appeared to be the front-runner but it was a no-go because of copyright issues. A fan poll at home games in January in February originally featured “Utah Hockey Club”, “Utah Mammoth”, and “Utah Wasatch” as options for the team’s potential name but the latter was swapped for “Utah Outlaws” because nobody outside of Utah had ever heard the word “Wasatch” before.
3. Since returning from the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Hockey Cub has gone 6-3-2 and have pulled themselves into the Wild Card race in the Western Conference. Utah is 30-26-11 on the season, two points back of the Vancouver Canucks for the eighth playoff spot with the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues also in between them.
The Hockey Club is arriving in Edmonton at the end of a three-game road trip. They started with a 4-2 loss to the Kraken and bounced back with a huge 3-1 win over the Canucks that drew them within striking distance of Vancouver in the standings.
4. Utah ranks 21st in the NHL with 189 goals this season and they’re 14th with 195 goals against. They have the third-most shot attempts per 60 minutes at even strength in the league and the fifth-most scoring opportunities, but they’re in the bottom third of the league in goals per 60 at evens thanks in part to an 8.27 team shooting percentage.
The Hockey Club has strong underlying numbers at even strength and they also have solid special teams units on both ends of the ice. They’re 13th in the NHL with a power play that scores on 23.3 percent of its opportunities and they’re 13th with a penalty kill that kills off 80.5 percent of opposing chances.
5. Clayton Keller is leading Utah in scoring with 75 points through 66 games this season. Nick Schmaltz is second on the team with 53 points while Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley are tied for third with 48 points. Keller and Guenther are tied for the team lead with 24 goals.
Mikhail Sergachev is leading Utah’s blueline in scoring with 43 points and in playing time with an average of 25:23 per game. Former Oilers prospect Mike Kesselring is second among Utah defencemen with 25 points in 67 games and the 2018 sixth-round pick is logging 18:03 per game.
6. Starting goaltender Karel Vejmelka has a 19-17-6 record for Utah this season along with a .909 save percentage in 44 appearances. There was talk about how the Oilers should try to acquire Vejmelka from the Hockey Club but he inked a contract extension worth $4.75 million annually over five seasons before the trade deadline.
Backup Connor Ingram posted a .882 save percentage in 22 games before entering the NHL/NHLPA Player Assitance Program. Undrafted 25-year-old Jaxson Stauber has a .925 save percentage in four games since being called up from the American Hockey League.
7. This will be the third and final game between the Oilers and Utah in 2024-25. Edmonton edged out the Hockey Club with a 4-3 overtime victory in their first trip to Salt Lake City in November and the Oilers beat Utah 4-1 at home on New Year’s Eve.
A win on Tuesday would complete the three-game season series sweep for the Oilers over Utah. It would be just like the good old days for the Oilers, as they swept their season series with the Coyotes in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
