The Edmonton Oilers pulled off arguably their most commanding win of the 2024-25 season on Thursday when they hammered the Nashville Predators by a score of 5-1 in their first game without Connor McDavid. They’ll look to carry that momentum into Calgary on Sunday for this season’s second Battle of Alberta.

1. The Oilers and Flames played in Edmonton three weeks ago and Calgary surprised the home team with a 4-1 win. With another win over the Oilers, the Flames can clinch their first season-series victory against Edmonton since the 2019-20 season.

Sunday’s game between the Oilers and Flames will be the only one in Calgary this season and the third and final Battle of Alberta of 2024-25 will be in Edmonton in late March.

2. Calgary’s win over Edmonton in October was part of a four-game winning streak that the Flames rode to start the season. They’ve slowed down since that first week and now own a 6-4-1 record.

The Oilers suffered from some sort of Stanley Cup Final hangover this fall as the team opened the season on a three-game losing skid. They’ve turned some things around and now have a 5-5-1 record but the Oilers still haven’t strung more than two good games together.

Edmonton’s 2023-24 regular season was defined by two extended winning streaks, one that came one game shy of a franchise record at eight games and another that shattered the franchise record and came one game shy of an NHL record at 16 games.

It’s not reasonable to ask for another 16-game heater but the Oilers need to find a similar level of consistency again this season in order to climb the standings and earn home-ice advantage through the playoffs.

3. A big reason for Calgary’s hot start to the season was strong goaltending. Rookie Dustin Wolf posted a .936 save percentage in his first three starts and Dan Vladar turned aside 25 of 26 shots in the team’s win over the Oilers.

Wolf has cooled off lately, as he allowed nine goals on 62 shots in back-to-back losses, and has a .907 save percentage on the season. Vladar has been inconsistent this season and owns a .909 save percentage through six starts.

The Flames beat the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night and Vladar outdueled his former goaltending partner with a 22-save shutout. Wolf will likely make the first start of his career against the Oilers on Sunday.

4. Calgary moved Jacob Markstrom to New Jersey in the off-season partially because they needed to make room to give Wolf a shot at the NHL level. The team’s seventh-round pick from the 2019 draft posted a .926 save percentage in 141 games over parts of four seasons with their AHL affiliate.

The Markstrom trade netted Calgary New Jersey’s first-round pick in 2025 and defenceman Kevin Bahl. The Flames don’t have their own first-round selection in the 2025 draft because it was moved back in August of 2022 to the Montreal Canadiens in order to dump Sean Monahan’s contract. Calgary also acquired a first-round pick that summer when they traded Matthew Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Flames become sellers like they did last season. General manager Craig Conroy traded Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm to the Vancouver Canucks, Chris Tanev to the Dallas Stars, and Noah Hanifin to the Vegas Golden Knights and Calgary took defenceman Zayne Parekh with the ninth-overall pick, their highest selection since taking Tkachuk sixth in 2016.

Andrei Kuzmenko, Anthony Mantha, Tyson Barrie, and Dan Vladar are all unrestricted free agents next summer, while Mikael Backlund and Rasmus Andersson each have one more season left with modified no-trade clauses. The latter two would be huge additions for any playoff contender.

5. The Oilers have a 5-5-1 record at the beginning of November and there’s been one common theme with all five of their wins — a fight.

Troy Stecher dropped the gloves with Sean Couturier in Edmonton’s first win of the season against the Philadelphia Flyers and Darnell Nurse scrapped with Michael McCarron in their next win over the Nashville Predators. Nurse fought again in their win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, Corey Perry stood up for a hard hit on Derek Ryan against the Detroit Red Wings, and Visaly Podkolzin two-punched Jeremy Lauzon in the team’s most recent win over Nashville.

“Some of those games I do think that it picked up our team,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said when asked about the Oilers getting a spark from fighting. “I believe the Philadelphia game was one of them. Just turning points to give our guys a little more momentum.”

Will there be a fight in this edition of the Battle of Alberta? The first meeting between the two teams was a snooze-fest without much intensity. If the Oilers find themselves down in the second or third period, they know the drill by now.

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