Early days, but Jujhar Khaira is looking good and in a more prominent role at this year’s training camp. He appears ready to start exhibition games as 4L, alongside center Mark Letestu and right winger Zack Kassian. That’s the Matt Hendricks role, and for Khaira, playing consistent hockey this fall may be the key to…
The lines on display this morning at Day One training camp have to be encouraging for the Edmonton Oilers and their fans. The idea of ‘strength down the middle’ takes on epic proportions at the center position with a depth chart boasting Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at pivot. The important numbers to…
The Edmonton Oilers are going to need to improve the penalty kill this coming season and I wonder about how management and coaching staff plan on deploying forward personnel on the PK. Let’s begin by looking at last year’s most used forwards on the PK, I’m using shots-against per 60 minutes as the measuring stick….
We’re back for another year! Weekend Update runs every Sunday night with updates from across the hockey world. We’re not in full go mode yet but there’s enough to update and perhaps a couple of things you didn’t know. BOGDAN YAKIMOV The big Russian center is playing regularly in the KHL (7gp, 0-2-2 averaging 15…
As the Penticton Young Stars tournament prepares to wind down (one more game for the Oilers, it goes tomorrow afternoon) we can begin to set our sights on main camp. We got some news yesterday on the ‘camp invite’ front with Chris Kelly who has an outside chance of making the roster as a penalty…
The Edmonton Oilers iced a skilled team tonight against the Calgary Flames in Penticton but the inexperience of the forward group cost them for much of the game. The Flames best players pushed for the first 40 minutes, with Dylan Wells and a solid Edmonton defense holding the opposition at bay. In the third period,…
Starting tomorrow, the Edmonton Oilers Young Stars will get the party started with the first games of (almost) fall. These games signal the coming attractions (main training camp, exhibition games), and the gigantic force of nature that is the NHL season. Watching these Oilers will seem a little strange, the lottery picks will be in…
When I was a kid we used to spend part of the summer in Penticton, at that time it would have been around 15,000 population. Now? Penticton and area is triple that and receives a major spike in humans during the summer months. The temperatures in Penticton are normally over 80 in peak summer and…
A year ago, TSN’s Travis Yost predicted it was possible for the Edmonton Oilers to ride the phenom Connor McDavid and ridiculous goaltending into the playoffs and that turned out true. In fact, but for luck and a timely misplacing of the rule book perhaps the story would have had more chapters in 2016-17. For…
Labor Day weekend means someone has to come up with innovative ideas for discussion that no one has thought of, and then write about it. Until that article arrives, let’s run some lines based on the current roster. As soon as I post this, Edmonton will invite this year’s Kris Versteeg, so there is some…
In the spring of 1980, Edmonton Oilers fans were basking in the glow of the team’s first NHL season. Watching the town team march into Maple Leaf Gardens and winning in a romp was fantastic, I well remember the absolute glee it brought me. Oilers fans most enjoyed watching opposition teams experience the shock and…
One year ago, Kris Russell was a free agent trying to find a place to land. The market dried up in a quick hurry and he was left stone alone. Eventually, the Edmonton Oilers came calling and Russell signed a team-friendly one-year deal with the team. Russell was rewarded this summer with a lucrative four-year…
