Three's A Crowd

Edmonton played their most complete game so far this season in taking down the Rangers on Sunday by a score of 3-1.  The Oilers got the early lead when Ryan Nugent-Hopkins buried his fifth goal of the year.  The Rangers tied it up when Carl Hagelin notched one for the Rangers nearly ten minute later, but things were going so well for the Oilers that Benoit Pouliot got of the schneid by scoring his first goal of the season, a pretty little thing from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.  Teddy Purcell would later add an empty net marker, it would be enough for the Oilers to sail out of Madison Square Garden with two points in the standings.

With absolutely no snark intended, the Oilers played a very good game in New York City.  They outshot the Rangers by a wide margin, player deployment was a little bit better (okay, Keith Aulie played only 13:29, that's a start), and goaltending held strong throughout the game.  If you can get this every night, you might start to get some more wins than losses.  Might.

The heat's likely to get turned up for this evening's match in Nashville

The Oilers are saying

Not sure what happened to @dallaseakins twitter account, but just saw this on FB. pic.twitter.com/i0EvxUqdxt

— RCN (@RossCreekNation) November 11, 2014

Man, I wish I would've caught this when it happened.  This tweet has since been deleted from Dallas Eakins' twitter account.  So everything's good between Yakupov and Coach, right?

• Is Taylor Hall back yet?  It's been ten days.  Come on, healthy ligaments.
• Andrew Ference made his return to the Oiler lineup on Sunday in Madison Square Garden.  Ference logged 22 minutes of ice time, and didn't give the puck away.  I'll take a muted performance over one I loudly remember for all the wrong reasons.  Martin Marincin caught the press box upon Ference's return, it wouldn't surprise me to see the same again today.
• Viktor Fasth picked up his second win of the year in NY, turning aside 20 of 21 Rangers shots.  I'm bewildered the Rangers were only able to lob 21 shots on this team's defence, but I'm not arguing. Fasth has looked good over the last two games, and I'd expect Coach to go with the hot hand today. I'm also not against this, as there's been a day's rest in between Sunday and today.
• Mike Ribeiro is on that top line in Nashville, and he's got eleven points (3-8-11) in 14 games.  The Predators have scored 35 goals on the season, which makes Mike Ribeiro a point-getter in over 30% of Nashville's goals.  Not bad for a one year deal at a million.
• Benoit Pouliot scored his first goal of the season in a two point night on Sunday.  Any more in that bag of tricks tonight?
• IS ANYTHING CHANGING?  Ask again after tonight. The Oilers had a 52 shot outing during Friday's 3-2 victory against the Sabres, but the Sabres' entire team would have dificulty beating a decent AHL squad at the moment.  The Oilers played their best game of the season on Sunday, and the Rangers had just got done playing the Leafs in a 5-4 heartbreaker the night before.  Were the Rangers tired?  Quite possibly.  Were the Oilers better?  Yes, very much.  Can they give Nashville a go for their money?