I’m not going to lie to you guys… the Oilers are playing so good that I don’t even want to bring up the thought of injuries. That said, everyone has been talking about broken ankles, torn MCL’s and the flu all week so I might as well jump right in too.

First of all, shout out to Joe Thornton for finishing the series with a torn ACL & MCL in the same knee. I can barely get out of bed most Sunday mornings cause I’m tired and this dude continues to wave the flag of hockey manliness. It’s impressive to hear all the stories of the Sharks playing injured, but we have yet to hear about any injuries from the Oilers side just yet. Frankly, I could care less about us hearing how beat up they all are because the sooner we hear the stories, the sooner they’re out of the playoffs. So forget about their injuries!

One thing we can confirm is that there is a flu bug going around the dressing room. Klefbom had it last series, Draisaitl arguably had it, and maybe even Maroon. The question now is, does McDavid have the flu? It wouldn’t surprise me, but I also don’t want to make excuses for his lack of points. He’s not playing like his regular self lately, but he also has 10x the jerk that is Ryan Kesler shadowing him. Either way for the sake of all things playoffs, I hope this flu going around kicks rocks and leaves us alone.

An interesting stat I came across this week from fellow Twitter man, @Dawgbone98, was that the Oilers had missed 120 MORE man games in the 2015-16 season due to injury than the 2016-17 season. Note that these lost man games are only in key positions (top 6F & top 4D). That is a wild stat and really shows how unlucky we were last season. The only top 6F man game lost this season was from Patrick Maroon sitting out game 82 for undisclosed reasons.

Happy first birthday to Tyler Pitlick’s daughter! I’ve never met you before, but I hope your first year on this planet was great. The Oilers made the playoffs after all so I suppose it’s a pretty good start.

I’m actually not even sure if Andrew Ference is still under contract with the Oilers anymore. I’m pretty sure it ends after the regular season but for good faith, I plan on including him for the remainder of the playoffs. He got us here so he might as well be here to ride it out.

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