The opposing view: Five For Howling

Dress Your Best For Success

The Edmonton Oilers looked absolutely lost in last night's 6-1 manhandling at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings. Yes, they were without Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle, but they exacerbated the ass-kicking by scratching Jeff Petry.  Oh, and Martin Marincin?  He can come back any day now.  Score effects went on to play a part in this game, because there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Kings could've pasted a ten spot on the Oilers.

I'm saying

This is the space where I usually grab a quote from Eakins or another Oiler and talk about it for three or four sentences.  Not tonight.

It's the third game of the season, your 1C is "bruised" and Eberle's out as well.  You might want to consider using one of the centres you were able to acquire during the offseason to compensate for your top scorer being out with an injury.  What's that?  You weren't able to acquire a centre during the offseason?  That's balderdash.  Surely, you jest.  Why, I remember quite vividly a fair amount of centres being available after July 1st.  What's that?  Still not able to acquire Derek Roy or Mike Ribeiro like Nashville did?  Even an Olli Jokinen at an enhanced rate?  No problem.  I'm sure you were first in line to grab Peter Mueller when he was on waivers last week.

No?  What's that?  You moved Will Acton in?  Oh.  Right.

Well, with that said, surely you've got some good things going with an up-and-coming D core. Surely Martin Marincin doing what he can on 1LD... Oklahoma?  You're shitting me.  That only doubles the workload for Jeff Petry, who...wait, you scratched him too?  Brad Hunt?  Why?

This isn't about effort, or pushback, or toughness, or the will to want to play.  This falls squarely on management for

• not preparing the team for an injury, and
• not using the best possible players given the circumstances.

This team is going to have trouble winning when they're healthy and their best players are in the lineup.  When two of your top guys are injured and you pluck two good defencemen off your back end, my question is "why?"

What have I done to deserve this?

That's Coyotes coach Dave Tippett on Arizona's victory against the Kings, and what they'll have to do tonight to overpower a hungry Oilers squad.

Devan Dubnyk earned his first victory of the year in goal against the Kings on Saturday, a 3-2 OT victory.  Man, that's got to taste pretty good.

• Paging Mr. Marincin.  Mr. Marincin.
• Paging Mr. Petry.  Mr. Petry.
• After three goals, Viktor Fasth skated to the bench and said something to Ben Scrivens. What he actually said is up for question, but he then went to the dressing room with what's being called a groin injury.  Richard Bachman, you're on line one.  Gee, there's a lot of telephones being used in today's game preview.  Get me Craig MacTavish on line two.
• MORE FUN - Boyd Gordon (the guy with more than 50 NHL games on his résumé down the middle) collided with Nikita Nikitin last night, and then he went off.  You can't make this stuff up.  Gordon came back and had an assist on Matt Hendricks' goal in the final minute, though.  Take that, Kings.
• PROJECTED LINES - will again be held off until this afternoon.  Maybe there'll be a Nuge, maybe there won't.  Maybe there'll be an Eberle, maybe there won't.  Maybe Bogdan Yakimov finds his way into the lineup again, maybe he won't.  Maybe Martin Marincin gets called up, maybe he won't.  Maybe Jeff Petry plays tonight, maybe he won't.  Ben Scrivens is gonna start though.  Put my dimes on that.