Following up Sunday night’s stink-job in Saskatoon, it was hard to predict how the Edmonton Oilers would look Monday night at Rexall Place. Thankfully for the home crowd Viktor Fasth came to play, turning aside 27 of 28 shots to give the Oilers a 3-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets. It was your typically sloppy and disjointed preseason game, featuring rosters punctuated by future camp casualties and a combined 46 penalty minutes. However, the Oilers’ best players shone brightest, as Taylor Hall scored two goals, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins registered two assists, and the inestimable Vladimir Tkachev had another game-changing assist to help open the scoring.
Preseason performances fall into those who show you something, and those who show you nothing. We’ll get to the players who showed something, but the ones who showed nothing include Kevin Westgarth, Keith Aulie, Will Acton, Travis Ewanyk, Andrew Miller and Mitch Moroz. We’re 10 days away from the regular season, when I won’t be able to stomach Westgarth’s two defensive-zone turnovers in the same shift or Acton taking uncontested punches after the whistle. Each roster decision should aim to give the Oilers the best chance to beat the Flames on October 9th. I don’t want to see any of those players anywhere near the roster by the end of the week.
Getting Defensive
Moving on to those who impressed on Monday night, I’m gradually becoming a Darnell Nurse fan. Of course, conventional thinking tells us that defencemen take longer to develop, advanced stats mean something, you shouldn’t swim an hour after eating, etc. Well, that’s all hooey and applesauce. Nurse’s biggest preseason crime is a mean streak that sometimes elevates from Rosie O’Donnell to Lizzie Borden, and that’s not such a bad thing. He’s been sound positionally while tracking the puck, shown effectiveness cancelling out oncoming forwards, blocked passing lanes nicely with an active stick, and joined the rush effectively. Right now, he’s in my top six.
David Musil and Brad Hunt aren’t in my top six, or top 10, for that matter, but each player demonstrated solid effort and willingness to do some dirty work. The Oilers played some bend-but-don’t-break defense, although Musil and Hunt were able to gather the puck and move it more effectively than Aulie and Nikita Nikitin (who will continue to be a suspect acquisition until he proves otherwise). Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of Nikitin, but it’s clouded by the fact that he was a healthy scratch for the Blue Jackets in game 6 last season and we gifted him a two-year, $9 million bridge deal. Bridge to what? Bridge to players on the blueline who are not named Nikitin. Yay.
Fasth made a strong opening bid for the starting job on Monday night. While he didn’t have to come up with any 10-bell saves, Fasth had to contend with some traffic in front and second-chance opportunities. In each instance he handled the situation calmly, staying low and directing the puck away safely. The live bullets don’t start flying for a while yet, but you could see Fasth giving the defenders confidence to get after the puck carrier and take some chances. The game never felt like it was in doubt after the Oilers opened the scoring, and that kind of safety and security is expected from a guy who’s expected to challenge Ben Scrivens for starter minutes.
Stand and Deliver
Up front, Hall and Nugent-Hopkins connected on a beautiful cross-ice one-timer for the eventual game-winner. I hope we see more of that this season, threading the seam to get the goaltender moving side-to-side. Hall put on a Broadway-worthy one-man show on his second goal, pulling up after driving the zone and sneaking a shot through the goaltender who had cheated to the far side. It’s that ability to create something from nothing 20 feet from the net on a sharp angle that sets Hall apart from almost every other winger in the league. Of course, you expect that from guys like Hall and RNH, but you can’t take it for granted because it doesn’t happen every night. See Eberle, Jordan.
The game’s chippy nature demonstrated some players’ willingness to gain attention and leave their mark by any means necessary. Training camp bubble boy Steve Pinozzotto dropped the mitts twice, clearly looking to fill the void left by Luke Gazdic’s absence and Westgarth’s horrendousness. It remains to be seen how much emphasis the Oilers place on grit to start the season, but last year’s opening-night roster contained knucklechuckers like Gazdic, Mike Brown and Ben Eager, so Pinozzotto might just be playing the percentages looking to fill a role. Either way, he looked decent on the forecheck and had a couple nice sequences to push the play forward.
I’ve already started building walls around my heart, bracing for the day when Tkachev is sent to play somewhere other than Edmonton. However, regardless of what the future holds for Vladdy Hockey, you can’t ignore the fact the he’s factored positively into every single game he’s played. How can you ask for more than that? Plus, for every scoring play he’s been a part of, he’s had a hand in another half-dozen near-misses. Ignoring Tkachev’s drawbacks for a moment (limited North American experience, Macaulay Culkin build, lack of contract, inability to legally drink in Saskatchewan) if Draisaitl had played as well as Vladdy Hockey has we’d all be fighting over who gets to drive his Calder campaign bus.
Rivaling Leon Draisaitl as both the most intriguing training camp participant and possibly a rookie NHL-caliber centre, Bogdan Yakimov had another steady night. His size alone (6-foot-5, 232 pounds) is something the Oilers haven’t seen up the middle in nearly two decades, but he uses it to shield the puck effectively and create space in traffic. Throw in the fact that he drew a couple penalties, and it was an effective night, even if he didn’t register any points. I can’t spell his nickname or pronounce it properly, but the Nizhnekamsk Nightmare is giving the coaching staff good reason to keep him around, and could end up bumping Mark Arcbello or Anton Lander down the depth chart.
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I may have gotten a little frisky on Twitter during the game, coming up with Yakimov-related myths, but I figure it’s a good way to show support for the new arrival and warn others around the league that Bogdan is coming. Below you’ll find a sampling of some of them. I know the comments section is usually filled with fart jokes and Cloutier-bashing, and that’s fine, but I would encourage you to chip in a Yakimov myth or two. I’ll post some of the best ones on Twitter.
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