The Edmonton Oilers aren’t going to simply up their skating game, fire up some free-wheeling, firewagon hockey and outscore the Colorado Avalanche in Games 3 and 4 at Rogers Place.
Colorado has more good players in its forwards ranks, and faster ones in its bottom six. On defence, they are both more skilled and quicker.
The Avs play fast hockey better than the Oilers play fast hockey, so it is up to Edmonton to slow this series down. To check better.
To control the centre of the ice. To beat Nathan MacKinnon and Nazem Kadri — the best two centremen in this series thus far — over 200 feet.
Outscoring MacKinnon is not the same as outplaying MacKinnon. Connor McDavid knows that, and now he must do that.
“I don’t think we’ve played our best game yet,” head coach Jay Woodcroft declared on Friday morning. “There's more there for us.”
“That's obviously encouraging,” offered Leon Draisaitl, “but we've got to make sure that it's coming soon. Really, really quick.”
So let’s have a little talk here, about what kind of “game” the Edmonton Oilers make their “best game.”
In Game 1 Woodcroft played McDavid and Draisaitl on the same line. Edmonton scored six, but allowed eight.
So he separated them for Game 2, and the Oilers cut their goals against in half. Yay. But, they got shutout in a 4-0 loss.
There is only one way this Oilers team won’t score, and that is if they never have the puck — as was the case in the last 40 minutes of Game 2, where the Oilers had 11 shots on goal.
If Edmonton has the puck — if they work defensively; be stronger up the middle than MacKinnon and Kadri; stop the sloppy work in their own zone — they’ll score enough goals.