Oilers Look For Revenge In Second Meeting With Blue Jackets

finn marceau

Thu, Dec 5, 2024, 8:15 a.m.·2 min read

The Oilers' last game against Columbus could not have gone worse.

Not only did they lose 6-1 in their worst performance of the season, they also lost Connor McDavid to injury. While McDavid ended up only missing three games, that loss to the Blue Jackets on October 28th felt like rock bottom. They were 3-5-1 after getting pummelled by a projected cellar dweller, and absolutely nothing was going right.

Just over a month later, the Oilers are in much better shape. They've gone 10-5-1 since losing to Columbus, vaulting themselves back into the playoff picture while seeing marked improvements in their special teams and, more recently, goaltending.

They enter tonight's game with four wins in their past six games after being unable to come away with a win despite a dominant performance in Vegas on Tuesday.

They'll face a red-hot Blue Jackets squad that's been one of the best stories in the league this season. Still grieving the tragic loss of Johnny Gaudreau over the summer, the Blue Jackets have hauled themselves up to the periphery of the Eastern Conference playoff picture despite being universally projected for a bottom-five finish before the season.

They've won six of their last nine games, led by early-season hot streaks from three players: Zach Werenski, Sean Monahan, and Kirill Marchenko.

27-year-old defenceman Werenski is in the middle of a breakout campaign as he stakes his claim as an upper-echelon defenceman in the NHL. His 8 goals are tied with Cale Makar and Jakob Chychrun for the league lead in goals among defencemen, while his 26 points rank third at his position. Better yet, Werenski is a workhorse, playing 26 minutes per night as the league's runaway leader in time on ice per game.

Monahan and Marchenko have been an absolute buzzsaw together in Monahan's brief time in Columbus, as two parts of one of the best lines in the NHL whether they're joined by Yegor Chinakhov or Dmitri Voronkov. Stopping "Monahanov" and his young Russian wingers has to be priority number one for the Oilers tonight.

The Oilers will get a boost on the scoring front tonight, as it looks like Zach Hyman will return from his five-game injury absence. Hyman's production is way down from his remarkable 54-goal campaign a year ago, but all the advanced stats under the hood say he's the same old player, and it's only a matter of time before his shooting luck returns.

Tonight's action gets underway at 7:00 PM, on Sportsnet West.

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