The Edmonton Oilers played their last "bad game" on March 11th against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They lost another game in OT on March 25th but I wouldn't have called that a bad performance by the Oil, just not the outcome they wanted. The game against the Leafs, the Oilers had a 2 goal lead and were dominating them before a series of costly errors resulted in the game quickly getting away from them.

Since then there have been hiccups, brief lapses in judgement and some periods where the Oilers have not been the better team but overall since the beginning of March this Edmonton team has been a force. No team has more wins since March 1st than the Oilers. The Oilers have scored the 3rd most 5 on 5 goals and have been excellent defensively with the 12th fewest goals against. Edmonton also leads the league in PP goals over this period with 20.

Skinner has been excellent all season but looks to be finding a new level as of late, allowing only one goal on 64 shots in 2 games against the LA Kings, a team that may very well be the Oilers first round opponent.

On the Kings, in the past two games the Oilers have handled their Pacific Division opponent beautifully and Jay Woodcroft deserves a ton of credit for their gameplan. The LA Kings are happiest when nothing is happening in the game. In the first period of the game last night there were 5 shots total in the first period. That is the Kings playing their game plan. It may be boring to watch but for most of this season it has given LA positive results.

In the past that would be a death sentence for the Oilers who used to get frustrated anytime they couldn't run their high octane offensive game. Those past teams would keep running at full speed at their opponent and hope eventually they would bend and break. This team instead, decided to play the same game as the Kings; and beat them with it. In both games against LA the Oilers were patient, waited for the Kings to take bad penalties and then kill them with their powerplay.

This is a scary to play Oilers team that right now doesn't seem to have many weaknesses. They are getting pretty good goaltending from Skinner, the Bouchard and Ekholm pairing has stabilized the backend and Nurse is playing far better to with the relief and the forward core has an excellent mix of dominant players and strong role players. This team has to be looked at as a favorite in the Western Conference.

Four games left. Four games to try and hold onto home ice advantage in round 1. In the past I would have expected the Oilers to take their foot off the gas after a great playoff like performance, only to lose against a far weaker Ducks team. I don't see that with this team and I think we are in for another dominant, high scoring Oilers game tonight. Time will tell.

Let's hope we see McDavid hit 150 and RNH hit 100 in the same night tonight!

Thanks for reading.

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