Oilers Notebook: Edmonton seeking identity in front of hostile Canucks crowd
For both the Oilers and the Canucks, this is not just another game. Edmonton is still looking for their identity after a sluggish start and Vancouver is hoping to take advantage of that and get some sweet revenge after their playoff knockout. Mark Spector has the details.
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VANCOUVER — “Hello, Newman…”
The Vancouver Canucks “welcome” the Edmonton Oilers to Rogers Arena the way Jerry Seinfeld welcomed a chance meeting with his postman neighbour.
“I’d be very surprised if guys aren’t ready for a Saturday night game against the Edmonton Oilers, after they beat us in seven games last year,” said Canucks head coach Rock Tocchet. “I mean, there’s a lot of juice in this game.”
“Saturday night, Hockey Night in Canada,” began Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse. “Playing against a division rival that we’ve established a relationship with over the course of last year… Yeah, there’s lots to dig into.”
It’s the first meeting this season between these two, who last squared off in a 3-2 Oilers victory in Game 7 of the second round last spring.
It’s an 8 p.m. Mountain puck drop, the late game on Hockey Night. At the morning skate — full skates for both clubs, not optional — it did not feel like just another game.
•••
Vancouver Vinny
Defenceman Vincent Desharnais once told me, “Everywhere, I’ve started as the seventh or eighth D-man. In college, I was the ninth guy when I showed up. And every time it’s like, ‘Whoa, that guy is tall!’ Like, ‘There’s something we can do with him, but it’s going to take time.’”
And his style?
“It’s not sexy, but I get the job done.”
Desharnais landed in Vancouver as a free agent this past summer. Gaining Tocchet’s trust has been, in Tocchet’s words, “a work in progress.”
“You’ve got to keep working with him,” said Tocchet, who has had assistant coach Sergei Gonchar working with the six-foot-seven Desharnais. “He needs reps. He’s got to really work on his game. And there’s some stuff there that he could really help our team with.”
Desharnais played the Canucks’ season opener, then sat out for two games. He played five more, then sat out for two more.
Finding a regular spot in this lineup is a metaphor for a career spent proving he belongs, convincing coaches that he can help their team win.
“That’s totally fair. But that’s what’s been making me who I am now,” he said. “I expected to be coming in and playing every game and boom, that’s not what happens. Either you stay frustrated and cry about it, or you turn it internally and say, ‘Okay. What do we do now?’ You just find solutions to stay in the lineup every night.”
Tonight will be his fourth straight start for Vancouver, alongside partner Erik Brannstrom.
•••
Identity Crisis
As these teams meet for the first time this season, after that rollicking, seven-game series last spring, they are two entirely different entities. Separated by just four points in the Pacific Division standings, the Canucks have found their game, while the Oilers are still searching for theirs.
Vancouver has only one regulation loss and one overtime loss sprinkled through their past nine games. That’s 15 out of 18 points — or two more points than the Oilers total in 14 games this season. They’ve gone 7-1-1 since opening the season at 0-1-2, though they’ll be without injured goalie Thatcher Demko (knee) and Brock Boeser (upper-body) tonight.
“We’re getting closer to our identity, where we want our game to be,” Desharnais observed.
The Oilers, meanwhile, have their headlamps on and compass in hand, searching for some semblance of the structure and 60-minute game that took them as far as it did in June. Most recently, they played a strong 50 minutes against Vegas, only to watch it unravel with two Golden Knights goals (plus an empty netter) in the final 10 minutes of a 4-2 loss on home ice.
“We’ve just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other,” said tonight’s starting goalie, Stuart Skinner. “Really, it’s a two per cent difference, and we could be winning so many games. Just really small little details, little boo-boos that end up in the back of our net. If we just clean up a few things, you could see us in a much different spot.”
Edmonton has been far better on the road (4-2-0) than at home (2-5-1), where their .313 points percentage ranks 31st in the 32-team NHL. The Oilers won two of the four games of that Rd. 2 series played here at Rogers Arena in May.
The penalty kill is crushing the Oilers, who have kept a clean sheet on the PK only three times in 14 games. Their 50.5 per cent “success” rate is the third after 14 games since the NHL started tracking the stat in 1977.
“You look at our run last year in the spring, a big part of it was our special teams,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Right now, for us to find that identity and start playing really well, that’s going to be a big part of it.”
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•••
“Skiiinneeer!!!”
Ever since last year’s season opener, when the Canucks blitzed Jack Campbell and Skinner for four goals each in an 8-1 whitewash, fans here have made a point of regaling Skinner every time he steps between the pipes. They’ll be ready tonight, with the “Skiiinneeer!!!” chants
“Sometimes it puts a smile on your face,” Skinner chuckled. “I mean, thousands and thousands of people are chatting your name in a building… I don’t care where you are, I don’t care who you are. That’s pretty cool.”
OIL SPILLS — Leon Draisaitl has nine of Edmonton’s 33 goals this season, the highest such percentage (27.3 per cent) of any player in the NHL this season … Connor McDavid has 992 points in 656 career games (338 G, 654 A). He is on pace to become the fourth-fastest and fourth-youngest player to notch 1,000 career points in NHL history … With 34 high-danger scoring chances this season, Zach Hyman sits second in the NHL behind NYI’s Anders Lee (37). With three goals in his last four games, his shooting percentage is finally creeping up (8.3 per cent) … Evan Bouchard leads the NHL in having 55 of his shots blocked. He has 35 shots on goal, tied for 15th, but leads all D-men with 29 scoring chances at five-on-five.
