Yahoo Sports Oilers Need To Keep Scoring Against Resurgent Bruins
The Oilers know well how a new coach can affect a team.
The hiring of Kris Knoblauch last November turned the Oilers' season around, sending them all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. The Boston Bruins attempted the same maneuver last month, firing Jim Montgomery despite his sparkling record in just over two years in Boston.
The change has done wonders so far. The Bruins have gone 9-4-0 since Joe Sacco took the helm on November 19th, tied with the Oilers for the fourth-most points in the league since then.
They've improved in all facets of the game under Sacco, but the biggest factor in their resurgence has been the return of their elite defence. They've gone from allowing 3.45 goals per game under Montgomery to 2.69 under Sacco, despite still getting mediocre goaltending from Jeremy Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo.
That means the onus is on the Oilers' top guns to find a way to break through the Bruins' lockdown defence and feast on the soft underbelly of their goaltending. It's fortunate, then, that the Oilers' offence has been firing on all cylinders for the past month or so.
November 19th is a convenient cutoff date for both teams. The Oilers have gone 9-3-0 over that span, with a league-best +22 goal differential. They've scored 4.33 goals per game over the past month, including at least five goals in three consecutive games.
Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are tied for second in the league in points during that time, with 23 each, while Zach Hyman has seven goals in six games since returning from injury.
The Oilers have also been elite defensively, though they've slipped a bit in recent games. They've still only allowed 2.50 goals per game since November 19th, but head coach Kris Knoblauch called their past two games "the worst we've had in terms of preventing chances against". They got away with it in a 6-3 win over Vegas on Saturday, before collapsing with an ugly 6-5 loss to Florida on Monday.
While the Bruins aren't quite the offensive juggernaut the Panthers are, they still have plenty of weapons at their disposal, and they're coming into Edmonton riding high after consecutive wins over the Canucks and Flames.
The Oilers just emerged from a four-game gauntlet where they faced four of the league's best teams with a 3-1 record and 20-11 goal differential. They look like the elite team everybody expected coming into the season, and they'll need to be in top form to handle another tough opponent in the Bruins tonight.
The puck drops at 7:00 tonight, on Sportsnet One.
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