3 important areas Oilers need to win to knock off Canucks
The Edmonton Oilers had to wait a full week, but their second-round matchup with the Vancouver Canucks is finally here.
Game 1 of the series is set to go in Vancouver tonight, and the much-anticipated all-Canadian matchup will get underway, with the Oilers being the heavy favourite to advance to the Western Conference Final for the second time in three seasons.
That is not a guarantee, however, that Edmonton will cake-walk their way through this series. The Canucks have proven this year that they are a very good team and swept the Oilers in the four-game season series this year.
If Edmonton wants to ensure their ticket to the next round, they will have to be playing their best hockey and win a few key matchups. A lot of their success will come down to three key areas that, if they win all three, will make it very difficult for the Canucks to have much of a chance.
Continue special teams dominance
If the Oilers can continue to score at the same rate on the power play as they did in their first-round series against the LA Kings, the Canucks will be in a lot of trouble.
Edmonton torched the Kings with nine power-play goals and a 45% success rate with the man advantage. This is despite LA finishing the regular season with the second-best penalty kill in the entire league. The Oilers also supplemented their PP by executing a perfect PK throughout the five-game series, not allowing a single Kings power-play goal.
The Canucks finished the season with the 17th-ranked PK in the league and allowed the Nashville Predators 16th-ranked power play unit to score twice in six games, which is more than respectable from a Vancouver standpoint.
Vancouver will prioritize their penalty kill against the Oilers in the series, and this will be a much harder test for Connor McDavid and the rest of the Edmonton power play. Even a slight fall-off on the PK and PP will still benefit the Oilers.
The team that wins the special teams battle might just win the series.
Win the goaltending battle
Goaltending will be a storyline all series long for both the Oilers and Canucks.
Edmonton will roll with Stuart Skinner, who started the first round with a few questionable games but quickly rebounded in the final three games of the series. Overall, he carries a .910 save percentage through five playoff games. In Games 3 to 5, that save percentage bumps up to .940 and includes a 1-0 shutout victory. Getting that kind of play from Skinner throughout the entire series will be a big advantage for the Oilers.
On the other side of the ice, the Canucks will be rolling with rookie Arturs Silovs to start the series, with both Thatcher Demko and Casey DeSmith suffering from injuries. The 23-year-old Latvian has become an overnight sensation for Vancouver, backstopping them to two wins in their first-round series while rocking a .938 save percentage in three games. He will be facing a different beast with McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Zach Hyman staring him down in this series.
The Oilers hold the advantage with the more experienced Skinner between the pipes to start, but this is a position that can change from good to bad in a matter of seconds.
Big guns stay hot
One thing that has always rung true for the Oilers is that their best players are always their best players when it comes to the playoffs.
Both McDavid and Draisaitl have played some of their best hockey in the postseason, and that trend has continued this season as well. The Oilers captain is tied for the top spot in the playoffs with 12 points, and Draisaitl isn’t too far behind with 10 points of his own. Hyman, who is coming off a 50-goal regular season, has also stayed hot in the postseason and is second in playoff goals with seven.
The Canucks, on the other hand, have not had their best players put up the numbers you would expect through the first round. Brock Boeser leads the way with four goals and six points, but Elias Pettersson is sitting at just three assists, and J.T. Miller has just a single goal and six points.
Vancouver captain Quinn Hughes had a fine first round with five assists, but he still lags behind Oilers’ defenceman Evan Bouchard, who tallied a goal and nine points in just five games.
There is always a possibility that the Canucks’ big players come to life, but if that trend continues into the second round, it will give the Oilers a much clearer shot at the Conference finals.
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