Fans got some good news today as it was announced that Connor McDavid will rejoin the Oilers.
Until that news came out, it was expected that the captain would miss at least another week.
Certainly the addition of #97 is a massive boon for the Oilers, who played well in his absence.
Knoblauch will now have some better options on how to set up the top nine forwards.

To be honest, the one forward I would take out of the top six and drop down is RNH.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been a great complimentary player for Edmonton but not this season.
Until Nuge finds his game, a 3rd line winger role might help both him and his team win.
Moving RNH to the third line paves the way for Jeff Skinner to play next to McDavid.
Pairing Skinner and Hyman (who is now scoring) with #97 is the best top six group as of today.

Skinner-McDavid-Hyman
Podkolzin-Draisaitl-Arvidsson
RNH-Henrique-Brown
Janmark-Ryan-Perry

This could not only bolster the top six, but provide a new look for the third line which has also struggled to produce out of the gates. The Draisaitl line is really starting to form some good chemistry and that is the one group I would not touch.

I wouldn't look to closely at the loss to the New Jersey Devils, Edmonton had played 3 games in four nights and eventually a team is simply going to run out of steam; which is exactly how the Oilers looked in that game. The one area that remains a concern is the special teams that continue to cost Edmonton dearly. They can't score a powerplay goal and it's almost automatic that they are giving up at least one powerplay goal against a game. 5 on 5 scoring has not been an issue for this team but at some point soon, this team needs to get their special teams play figured out.

I wouldn't call tonight's game a must win by any stretch, but if the Oilers want to be the top team in the Pacific Division and have home ice throughout the playoffs, they need to beat the best teams and right now Vegas is the top team in the Pacific Division. Vegas' scoring is led by Mark Stone and Jack Eichel but they are also getting some excellent complimentary help in the likes of Ivan Barbashev and Pavel Dorofeyev who are tied for the team lead in goals with 7 apiece.

The one area the Golden Knights are most vulnerable is in net as neither Samsonov nor Hill have really grabbed the reins as the starting goaltender. Hill has a 0.874 SV% in 7 games while Samsonov has a 0.906SV% in 5 games. These are beatable netminders and hopefully tonight we can see the Oilers powerplay, rejuvenated by McDavid's return score some timely goals.

Thanks for reading.

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