Oilers v. Canucks - Exodus 2:5-10

Then the daughter of Gillis went to find her seat in the stands along with some of her friends. There, she saw a young boy crying into his jersey, and she felt sorry for him. "This must be a young Oiler fan!" she said.

The young boy's sister then appeared and said, "We moved here three years ago, and my poor brother has endured nothing but relentless taunting."

"That's terrible!" Gillis' daughter replied. "Let me find this boy a new jersey with a more appropriate logo on it so that he will no longer endure such torment. I will pay for it myself, and I will be a friend to your young brother. Who knows? Maybe one day he will help my father lead this team!"

So they went together to get the boy a new jersey that he could wear without shame. Gillis' daughter had "Moses" written on the back of the jersey for, she said, "I lifted him out of misery!"

Edmonton Oilers @ Vancouver Canucks

Rogers Arena, 8:00 p.m. MST
Television: Sportsnet

The Race to the Bottom (It's Happening Again):

Visiting Team Scouting Report: Didn't the Oilers just lose to this team? Living in Vancouver feels like a curse at times like this. The second of back-to-back games, playing on the road, the opponent is clearly better (the Canucks are 8th in the NHL with a shot differential of +2.0 per game; the Oilers are 28th with -4.4). There's very likely some ribbing come my way tonight.

Expected Lineups:

Edmonton Oilers (16-32-6):

Hall - Nugent-Hopkins - Eberle
Yakupov - Gagner - Perron
Hendricks - Gordon - Jones
Smyth - Arcobello - Joensuu

Marincin - Petry
N Schultz - J Schultz
Belov - Potter

Bryzgalov

Vancouver Canucks (27-17-9):

Sedin - Schroeder - Kassian
Higgins - Kesler - Burrows
Hansen - Dalpe - Sestito
Lain - Richardson - Weber

Edler - Bieksa
Hamhuis - Tanev
Stanton - Garrison

Luongo

By The Numbers:

• This hasn't been a very good season for Nick Schultz. The defensive defenseman has definitely struggled defensively, and even though he's never had much offense, Schultz is also having the worst offensive season of his career with just three points through fifty-one games. That's 0.06 points per game, just a hair below the 0.09 he put up in the year that the Oilers acquired him from Minnesota and well below his career average of 0.17.
  
• Kellan Lain scored his first career NHL goal the last time these two teams played. Unfortunately for the Canucks, they don't have any players needing to reach that particular milestone tonight. Although... I suppose that's not quite true... is this Luongo's night?
• Remember that putrid shot differential I mentioned earlier? -4.4 shots per game. That's actually better than last season (-6.0). Not quite as good as 2011-12 though. They had a shot differential of -4.0 that year. Heady days, those were.