Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of blogs - had a minor surgery and doing much better now!

The Oilers are slowly trying to claw their way out of the massive hole they put themselves in and put themselves back into a playoff position. They have a long way to go but victories against divisional opponents such as the one against the Ducks on Sunday is certainly a good start.

PDO is a heck of a thing. For those who don't know, PDO is a measure of a team's shooting percentage and save percentage. The number should add up to 100. Anything above that is considered puck luck while anything below that is considered bad puck luck. That's a bit of an oversimplification but teams well above or well below that number typically regress back to the mean.

The Oilers through the first month of the season had the 6th lowest PDO and the Golden Knights had the 6th best. Make no mistake, the Oilers have had more issues than just puck luck but it was certainly a factor. Meanwhile whatever the Golden Knights were shooting was going in the net for them.

Flashforward to now where the PDO has settled for the Oilers and they are earning some wins. Meanwhile the Golden Knights can't seem to buy a goal. In their last four games they have scored just 3 goals.

This is a tough matchup for the Oilers but they need to find a way to beat teams that are better than themselves if they want to try and right this ship. Right now the Oilers have two games in hand over both the Kraken and the Flames. If the Oilers win both those games they are a mere 2 points behind those clubs. That would be a huge step in the right direction to be at least competitive by the Christmas break. Suddenly the Golden Knights are looking beatable, the Ducks are regressing to what we expected them to be and the Canucks are looking average. The Pacific Division remains wide open.

Connor McDavid had a brilliant night against the Ducks and it's looking like whatever injury issues were bugging him are at least less of a factor now. Anyone want to bet against McDavid still finishing as the leading scorer in the NHL?

Thanks for reading!

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