Oilers Notebook: Why being on the road around the holidays isn't all bad

EDMONTON — Here is something you may or may not know about your favorite National Hockey League player: Inside the super-fit body, the giant-sized paycheque and the hockey ability that makes every Canadian shinny player just a little bit jealous, he is a person too. 

So, as Christmas approaches, the fact that the Edmonton Oilers are off in New York/New Jersey for these final pre-Christmas days is absolutely the best case scenario for a team trying to grab back the focused, defensive game that led it to a recent eight-game winning streak. 

Why? 

Because the Oilers have got gifts to buy and family coming in from all over. They’ve got tickets to find for the home games, and spouses with to-do lists longer than Vincent Desharnais’ hockey stick, the same as most other people in town. They’ve got small children, Christmas photo shots, gifts to wrap, etc. 

If you’re trying to re-focus in late December, the road is the place to do it. 

Define Defence 

Edmonton won the first four games of its recent homestand, got goalied by the great Andrei Vasilevskiy in a 7-4 loss to Tampa (two empty-netters) and then laid an egg in a 5-2 loss to Florida. 

“Probably the first in a while where we really didn’t stick to our standard,” admitted Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl on Sunday, before the team left for the road Monday. 

A team that entered the season fixated on lowering its goals against took a while to figure that out, starting with an 8-1 loss on opening night. It was month of defensive play that was poor enough to get coach Jay Woodcroft fired. 

But when Edmonton did finally find its defensive chops — the Oilers were the best defensive team in the game for three weeks, from Nov. 24 to Dec. 13 — they looked like a team that has a chance to contend. 

We get it — three weeks is next to nothing inside a six-month season. But when this team defends, with the offence Edmonton has, it’s an awfully hard team to beat. 

“We’re always going to generate enough chances,” Draisaitl said. “It’s just the other side. (Against Florida), we were just a little too soft, made some bad reads, and commitment to doing that right. We’ll get that fixed.” 

“We’ve just got to be quicker and harder. It’s really that simple,” said Evander Kane of his team’s defensive coverage. “When we do that … we really don’t spend much time in our D zone.” 

Miles of Isles  

Tuesday night’s opponent, the New York Islanders, are known to be stingy. But this season they are ranked 20^th in the NHL in goals allowed per game (3.23), while scoring 3.10 per game (17^th). 

So, not as stingy as you’d think. 

“They’re a heavy team that forechecks hard and crashes the net. Their centre depth is really good,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. 

The Isles do have good centremen: Bo Horvat, Brock Nelson, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Casey Cizikas. But as a team they’ve also given up three or more goals in nine of their past 10 games. Meanwhile, the Islanders offence is way up recently: fourth in the NHL since Nov. 15. 

In a matchup in which the most important win in Oilers franchise history was a 1-0 win at the old Nassau County Coliseum in the 1984 Stanley Cup Final, perhaps we get a shootout Tuesday night? 

Game Lineup vs. Islanders

Here are the Oilers lines and pairings from Tuesday's morning skate: 

Kane-McDavid-Hyman 

RNH-Draisaitl-Foegele 

Janmark-McLeod-Brown 

Gagner-Hamblin-Ryan 

Nurse-Ceci 

Ekholm-Bouchard 

Kulak-Desharnais 

Skinner 

While the former top line of Connor McDavid between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman was simply too productive to break up for a while, the two recent losses highlighted how the middle six just wasn’t working. 

The struggling Connor Brown falls down to the third line, where he’ll continue trying to find his game after missing a year with ACL surgery. And, in our opinion, Draisaitl gets Nugent-Hopkins because he is the winger who best meshes with Draisaitl at even strength, where Draisaitl has only four of his 12 goals this season. 

Meanwhile, Kane has always been most effective with McDavid, to my eye. 

“All of us in the top six have played together for stretches, for periods of time, ever since I’ve been here,” Kane said. “It’s a good opportunity for me to re-ignite some chemistry with those guys, and have a good road trip.”