Oilers-Canucks Notebook: Will Draisaitl play? Can McDavid rebound?

VANCOUVER — Leon Draisaitl will be a “game-time decision” for Game 2, according to both the Oilers centre and head coach Kris Knoblauch.

“I’m feeling a bit better today. We’ll see how I feel tonight,” Draisaitl told reporters after an optional Oilers morning skate, in which he did not take part.

Knoblauch added Adam Henrique (ankle) into the conversation, when asked about his Game 2 lineup.

“Game-time decisions,” he said. “They will be coming to the rink and probably both partake in the warmup, then we’ll make a decision.”

Sam Carrick will take the warmup in case Draisaitl cannot play. We’ll assume that if Henrique can play, Connor Brown may fall out of the Edmonton lineup, but that is not certain.

Television editors have been scouring the Game 1 video to see where Draisaitl incurred what is believed to be a back injury of some sort. There was a small cross check from Nikita Zadorov, an awkward collision with an official, but nothing definitive that had Draisaitl in the Edmonton dressing room for the back half of Period 2.

“It certainly was not a big play, because otherwise anyone … would have seen it,” said Draisaitl, who would not reveal anymore than that.

He says his team will be much better tonight than they were Wednesday.

“There's lots of room for improvement,” the Oilers assistant captain said. “We had spurts where we were okay. Maybe early on was probably our best little time of the game. But I think we all have a lot more, and we know that.”

Arty Lover

There really wasn’t much doubt about which Canuck goalie would play, but coach Rick Tocchet confirmed that minor-league callup Arturs Silovs will get his fifth straight start despite his poorest game of the playoffs during Vancouver’s Game 1 win.

After building a .938 save percentage in Round 1 against the Nashville Predators, whom Silovs closed out with a 1-0 road shutout one week ago, the 23-year-old was beaten four times on 18 shots by the Oilers and looked awful on Zach Hyman’s dribbler through his pads.

But the Canucks did rally to win and Silovs, after going 22 minutes without a shot, made four saves in the final four minutes, the best of them on a back-side one-timer by Draisaitl in the final seconds.

Canuck veteran Casey DeSmith did nothing to lose the starting job except suffer a minor injury in Game 3 against Nashville, but has been healthy since Game 5 and is now watching from the bench.

“I thought he hung in there for us,” Tocchet said of his decision to stick with Silovs. “Goalies aren't always going to be perfect. And I thought, you know, he's a good choice. Casey could have easily started today, too, so they're tough decisions. Really tough.”

Lining ‘Em up

The Canucks Game 2 lineup is expected to be identical to Game 1, while Edmonton has the aforementioned injuries to worry about. Judging by Thursday’s practice, Warren Foegele will jump up to the top line on Connor McDavid’s left side — assuming Henrique does not return to his former spot, of course.

If Draisaitl does not play, and we suspect he will, Carrick draws in.

Here’s how the Oilers are expected line up:

Foegele-McDavid-Hyman

RNH-Draisaitl-Kane

Holloway-McLeod-Perry

Janmark-Ryan-Brown

Ekholm-Bouchard

Nurse-Ceci

Kulak-Desharnais

Skinner

These are Vancouver’s lines:

Suter-Miller-Boeser

Joshua-Lindholm-Garland

Hoglander-Pettersson-Mikheyev

DiGiuseppe-Blueger-Lafferty

Hughes-Hronek

Soucy-Myers

Zadorov-Cole

Silovs

Hit And Miss

Of the many elements the Oilers see as missing from their Game 1 performance, physicality is somewhere near the top of the list.

Off-ice officials credited Edmonton with 33 hits to Vancouver’s 36 in Game 1, but the guys — starting with Darnell Nurse — expected to be the most physical in fact were the least.

Should Edmonton be throwing more hits?

“If it presents itself,” Nurse said. “I don’t think we should go out of our way searching for it, looking for it. But as a group, we have to be harder in the corner, in our battles. That would probably eliminate some of the D-zone time we had (in Game 1).”

Between he, Cody Ceci, Vincent Desharnais and Brett Kulak, only one hit was registered on the Game 1 event summary. Does that need to change in Game 2?

“Yeah. I would say, for sure,” Nurse admitted. “Personally, I probably wasn’t taking the physical advantage when I could. That’s part of this time of the year.”

Desharnais leads this defence corps in hits-per-60 (9.75) in these playoffs. He had one hit in 17:50 of ice time in Game 1.

“I don’t think physicality is just shown in hits,” Desharnais began. “Box-outs, little cross checks, net front (presence), little slashes, they go a long way too. But we can definitely be a little more physical on their forwards. Create space for our goalie to see the puck better.”

The McDavid Rebound

Great players don’t stack up poor games. They don’t allow themselves to struggle for long or fall into “slumps.”

If Sidney Crosby is quiet one game, he is likely to be deafening the next. The same applies to Connor McDavid.

And since the Oiler superstar was held Wednesday to a single, second assist and zero shots on goal for the first time in his playoff career, the Canucks are bracing themselves for Game 2.

“He's one of the best players — is the best player,” Vancouver centre J.T. Miller, who frequently went head-to-head against McDavid, told reporters after the morning skate. “He's going to play a strong game today. We understand that. I just think. . . don't turn the puck over, and when they have it, you've got to be above him (on the defensive side). It's not super confusing for us.”

Including three regular-season games when the Oilers were awful pre-coaching change, McDavid has just one goal and three assists in four games against the Canucks this season. In 10:58 of five-on-five ice time of McDavid versus Miller on Wednesday, shot attempts with 11-4 for Vancouver and expected-goals-for were 74 per cent for the Canucks.

“Honestly, you never really feel comfortable when you're playing against him,” Miller said. “I said I didn't want to look too much on the regular season, but I think we've had a little bit of success just because we're sticking to the game plan. I thought last game was a good test where they're up by three (4-1) and we could have got away from the game plan a little bit to try to get more (offence). And we stayed with it and were patient and got paid off.

“We know he bounces back better than anybody. We expect him to play a really strong game, so we have our hands full today.”

Anti-Embellishment

Tocchet has been crusading for weeks for the National Hockey League to crack down on embellishment as players try to dupe referees into calling penalties. There have been several embellishment calls in the playoffs, including two on Thursday when Dallas Star Mason Marchment and Carolina Hurricane Andrei Svechnikov were whistled for exaggerating contact, negating what would have been power plays for their teams.

“You've got to stamp it out,” Tocchet reiterated. “I don't think a $1,000 fine or anything helps. I have a tough time telling guys to fake stuff. I really do. When I played, there's certain guys who would embellish and, back in the day, I know some of the old-style refs back then, they would just say, 'I'm not going to call a penalty (for) that guy again.’ I like that. That'll stop it. I think it cheapens the game when you embellish.”

Amen.