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So here we are then, Edmonton vs. Vancouver in a playoff matchup.
So here we are then, Edmonton vs. Vancouver in a playoff matchup.
It’s only happened twice. The first was in 1986, a three-game, first-round Oilers sweep in the best-of-five series when the Oilers actually rotated Grant Fuhr and Andy Moog in net. The second and last time in 1992, in Round 2, when it went six games when Joe Murphy, bless him, had two game-winning goals, one in overtime, and Billy Ranford was the Oilers goalie start to finish against Kirk McLean. The Oilers lost the next round in ’92 to Chicago Blackhawks and Eddie Belfour.
Hard to believe, that two rivals have only met twice over 38 years.
But there you have it.
Here are 10 things to ponder with the second-round series likely starting Tuesday in Vancouver. Last time Vancouver hosted the Oilers in a playoff game out there was May 10, 1992, so almost 32 years ago.
1. Remember Game 1 of regular-season, Oct. 11, out in Vancouver. It was 8-1 for the Canucks, with Jack Campbell getting the start, then Stuart Skinner coming in. “We laid an egg,” said then-Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft, in a substantial understatement. What he could have said was,“We laid an egg the size of the one in Vegreville, the giant Ukrainian Easter-egg sculpture.” We know it’s a long time ago, but the Canucks greased the skids for Woody’s firing, winning three times in the first 11 games, the last win just six days before Jay was gone for Kris Knoblauch.
2. Forget J.T. Miller and Quinn Hughes. The player the Oilers may have to worry about more is Brock Boeser, who set up Pius Suter for the GW in Nashville Friday. Boeser had four goals in that opening Oilers game in Vancouver and two more the second time they played them on the West Coast on Nov. 6. So six in his home rink vs. Edmonton. Boeser had 40 in the regular-season and also led the Canucks in scoring vs. Nashville with four snipes, so 44 in 87 games. Clearly, he will require some attention, maybe more so than Elias Pettersson in the pre-scout.
3. Skinner played every minute against L.A. in Round 1, giving up only four goals in the last 82 shots over three games, and unless he gets hurt, he’ll start every game in this one, but who knows who the Canucks will be trotting out? It’s Three’s A Crowd in their cage, which makes Oilers goalie coach Dustin Schwartz’s pre-series video scouting report a little trickier, don’t you think? The Canucks started Vezina finalist Thatcher Demko before he got another leg problem in Game 1, then went to backup Casey DeSmith for two starts before he got a minor injury issue, and they went to Latvian third-stringer Arturs Silovs for the last three games — he of the pink dress shirt that Miller playfully wore instead of a team jersey in practice in Nashville to loosen up his team. Silovs stopped 75 of 80 shots, including a last-game shutout. Do they ride the hot hand or go to DeSmith, who beat Oilers in his two starts in regular-season? Demko is skating but not practising with the team yet.
4. The L.A. series was all about special teams. We’ll see if it’s the same story against the Canucks. The Oilers led everybody in Round 1 with a combined 145 power-play and penalty-kill percentage, going 12 for 12 on the penalty kill and 9-for-19, 45 per cent, on the power play. By comparison, Carolina led in the regular season at 113.3, and Oilers were 105.8. The Kings got the shakes, as if they were caught outside in a T-shirt and gym shorts on a -20 C winter day, every time the Oilers power play came out, even though in the regular season only Carolina had a better penalty kill than the Kings. So go figure.
While the Canucks were 90.9 per cent on their penalty kill against Nashville at 20-for-22, which was third stingiest behind the Oilers and Boston, the Predators don’t have Connor McDavid as a human zone entry and Leon Draisaitl hammering shots. The Canucks were a mediocre 26th on the penalty kill at 79 per cent in the regular season. Will that cut it against the Oilers?
5. Back in the Oilers glory days, their M.O. was to shoot the puck into the corner of the opposing team’s No. 1 defenceman and try to wear him down. They did it to Mark Howe in the Flyers finals, they did it to Ray Bourque in the Boston finals. Nashville pounded Hughes, the possible Norris trophy winner, at every opportunity because they knew the offence up ice revolves around his passing. The Oilers kept dumping the puck into Drew Doughty’s corner in the L.A. series. Good bet, Evander Kane, the Oilers best hitter, will be bearing down on the 175-pound Hughes early and often, but Hughes is considerably more elusive than the 34-year-old Doughty.
7. The Kings were into head-to-head centre matchups, with Anze Kopitar against Leon Draisaitl and Phil Danault seeing McDavid pretty much every shift. Familiarity over three-straight spring series bred the requisite hostility. Vancouver traded for Elias Lindholm at the deadline, presumably for matchup purposes, and he could get either 29 or 97 from his Calgary-Oilers days. Lindholm saw a fair bit of Ryan O’Reilly in the Nashville series. Miller is the bigger body, so might get Draisaitl, but we’ll see.
8. Vancouver is constructed big on the back end to surround Hughes, with Nikita Zadorov and Tyler Myers the leading proponents of size matters. They’re deeper from 1-through-6 than L.A., with the Kings not playing Andreas Englund much in a third pair. Canucks have small forwards in their top nine, though: Pettersson, Conor Garland, Nils Hoglander, Suter. Pettersson had just eight shots in the six Nashville games and didn’t score. He has two goals on 88 shots over his last 19 games total.
9. Oilers winger Zach Hyman has more goals, seven, in the playoffs than any Canucks player has points, and in one fewer game, but who’s counting? Hyman scored his seven Oilers goals on 20 shots. Only Draisaitl, with 23, Carter Verhaeghe at 22 and Matthew Tkachuk with 21 had more shots than Hyman in Round 1, but his shooting percentage of 35 was the best by a mile.
10. It’s a long way back to the last Oilers-Canucks playoff meeting in the spring of 1992 but here’s one forgotten fact: Randy Gregg, with five Cup rings as an Oilers player, played his last-ever NHL game for Vancouver against his old Edmonton team on May 12, 1992, at Rexall Place. Made for an interesting handshake line.
