The Edmonton Oilers secure their first win of the season in close defeat of the Vancouver Canucks

The Edmonton Oilers won 3–1 against the Vancouver Canucks last night in Edmonton. Noah Philp scored his first career goal, Andrew Mangiapane his second of the season in his 500th career game, and Leon Draisaitl drained an empty net backhander from centre ice to propel the Oilers past the Canucks.

This was the first game I was able to watch this season and was very impressed with the result. It was one of the more complete games I have seen the Oilers play. They didn’t play down to the Canucks level and generally dominated the play from start to finish. I saw something to like from almost every player on the Oilers roster. This would have been a 7–1 game if Thatcher Demko didn’t have one of the best single game goaltending performances I have ever seen.

Here were some of the standout points from the game:

McDavid and Draisaitl’s dominance

In the past I believed it would be best to split up Connor McDavid and Draisaitl, largely because a lack of depth plagued the Oilers for many years. I felt the best strategy was to have a strong one-two punch. An opposing team might hope to shut down one of those lines but not both. With the success of the Ryan Nugent-Hopkins-McDavid-Zach Hyman line in the past, that is still a solid argument.

If only for selfish reasons I think I have changed my mind. Whenever the McDavid-Draisaitl-Trent Frederic line hit the ice, they passed the biscuit around like a grandmothers-only bake-off at a Texas state fair. Plain and simple, they are playing the most exciting hockey that there is. The fluidity, creativity, and constant re-grouping reminds me of the “Russian Five” in Detroit.

This line represents an immediate boost in morale for the Oilers. The opposing team can’t get momentum for more than three minutes because the MDF line comes out and terrorizes them, often taking a penalty in their terror.

What truly made me believe in the viability of placing McDavid and Draisaitl on the same line though, was how solid the rest of the team looked without a star on their line. This was an extremely impressive game by the Oilers, one of the most complete I have ever seen them play. It simply felt like they expected to win that game and that any other outcome would have been a literal impossibility. They have adopted an impenetrable winners attitude and I expect them to make another deep run this year.

Impressed by the two rookies

This was the first game I was able to watch of the Oilers, and therefore the first time seeing Isaac Howard play in the NHL. At one point in the game, Oilers Commentator Jack Michaels mentioned that the Oilers will have some players come off the IR soon, namely Zach Hyman, Mattias Janmark, and Jake Walman. Room will have to be made in the forward corps for at least Zach Hyman, and maybe Janmark as well.

Even though Isaac Howard is a very promising prospect, and I’m sure the reigning Hobey Baker winner will be an impressive scorer in this league, I think he will be the first to draw out of the lineup. On a night where I saw something good out of almost every single Oiler forward, Howard seemed to be a little behind the play.

By the looks of things, Howard would benefit from a year in the AHL.

On the other hand I was very impressed by Matthew Savoie, while I wouldn’t necessarily expect a breakout season from him he made some nice moves and some nice plays and deserves to be on this team.

The Canucks conundrum

Moving away from the Oilers, what I saw from the Vancouver Canucks made me think they are in for a near copy of last year’s season. Obviously it’s extremely foolish to make a prediction like that this early in the year, but they just felt like they had no recourse in the face of the Oilers offence and no push back when things were bad.

While this appeared to be a close game, that was only by virtue of the outstanding play of Thatcher Demko, who you can’t help but feel sympathy for, making 34 saves on 36 shots, many of them showstoppers, and still losing the game. This game reminded me of many Calgary games last year where Dustin Wolf kept them in the game and in the season right up till the end.

For Vancouver fans, the most depressing part was that Elias Petterson, in the same style as last year, was all but missing. He is simply not looking like the same 102 point Elias Petterson of three years ago. Yesterday their goalie held them in a game they had no right being in and could have stolen if their star player took over the game. That didn’t happen and the Oilers walked away with the two points they deserved.