The Need to Knows
- The Time: 1pm PST
- The Place: Climate Pledge Arena in beautiful Seattle, Washington
- Place to Watch: KONG, KHN Network, Amazon Prime, SportsNet
- Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM
Game Preview
Welcome back! How was the meal? You win that argument with Uncle Tedthony? Of course you did. I believe in you.
Anyway, the Kraken take on the Oilers this afternoon! That’ll be a good seasoning for your turkey sandwich!
The Oilers are in a bit of a rut. They’ve slightly improved their performance after snapping a 3 game losing skid last week, but have entered a new and exciting phase of being .500, and also extremely prone to giving up multi-goal games that their offense just does not find the necessary gear shift to counteract. There used to be a time in which Edmonton was all about speedboat hockey, but right now that vaunted Oilers forecheck that had their xGF% up in the top ten last year seems moored to the docks; having plummeted all the way to 25th, has been sinking with each passing game, and has been relegated to shooting from the points and from the net-front to mixed success.
A big part of this rut is their goaltending is…bad. It’s very bad. The brave decision to stick with Stuart Skinner and back him up with Calvin Pickard has largely yielded sub-.900% goaltending that their defense is absolutely not up to the task of mitigating. They’ve figured out how to stop a lot of shots from the outside!..Just not ones from the most dangerous part of the ice, which happens to be right in front of the goalie, and you can see how that might become a negative feedback loop that has them able to beat the Stanley Cup champions and then turnaround and get their heads blown smooth off by Dallas, then lose 2-1 to the Lightning.
So naturally, getting directly up in the face of whichever Oilers’ netminder they’ve landed on as a starter should be the goal coming into tonight’s game. Just keep attacking them over and over. They’ll break eventually.
Of course, slacking off against the Oilers is a fool’s errand; even if they’re struggling and their depth is largely failing them, the two big reasons they’re still in most of the games they play; Draisaitl and McDavid, are still quite healthy and still doing their thing. In games they’ve won recently, the pair usually combined for at least three points or more. Keeping them contained is going to be critical. Further, they will be without Jaden Schwartz, a quietly strong performer as always, for six weeks thanks to a lower body injury. His absence will be sorely felt, and it falls once again on the Kraken’s young talent to try and meet the moment.
Also the penalty kill is going to be in the torment nexus again if they take too many if at all because that’s like the one thing the Oilers can still do really well, so please keep your hands and sticks to yourselves, boys.
It’s another fine day for Kraken hockey, so let’s keep the gravy train rolling and give Edmonton a crushing reminder that they did in fact choose to keep those goaltenders, and that they are blowing Connor’s “prove it” contract out of the gate.
LET’S GO KRAKEN, LET’S GO SQUIDS!
