IT’S EARLY, BUT OILERS GIVING FAN BASE HOPE
Top line shines with Rattie on McDavid’s wing, and team is showing signs of life
It’s taken forever for Edmonton Oilers expectations to begin to rise again following the large letdown from the big buildup the year before. But it seems to finally be happening now.
While the degree of difficulty has been minimal in their first three pre-season games, they’ve all been wins and the fans have taken notice.
It’s the seeing that leads to the believing and some fans are beginning to think they’re seeing why Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli decided to bet on a bounce-back season and focus on developing young players.
The cry all off-season was to find a right winger. Thursday, Ty Rattie scored two goals and added three assists and now has four goals and three assists in two games. He’s definitely going to open the season with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in Sweden.
Meanwhile, Jesse Puljujarvi, who scored the Oilers’ first goal, his second of the pre-season, looks like he has matured a bunch.
And Kailer Yamamoto, supposedly earmarked for Bakersfield, hasn’t dropped his stock either with two goals and two assists.
Thursday night, a reasonable facsimile of the Oilers’ seasonopening lineup defeated a lessthan-prime time edition of the Winnipeg Jets 7-3.
Last year at this stage, it was all excitement. Not this year.
But there’s definitely some brewing.
The Oilers were 12-to-1 odds, on bodog.ca, at the start of last season to win the Stanley Cup. When the puck dropped to start the regular season, Connor McDavid and the Oilers had become co-favourites, with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, at 8-to-1.
By Nov. 1, they’d dropped to 18-1 and opened December at 40-1. By Feb. 2 the Oilers were 66-1. By March 3 they were off the board.
Odds, people often forget, are determined by the amount of money bettors are willing to put on them. And so shaken were Oilers fans by the 25-point drop in the standings in 2017-18 from the team’s 103-point, one win-from-the-Western Conference final season in 2016-17, that expectations for the 2018-19 version of the team remained low all off-season.
Normally fans — even during the decade of darkness when the Oilers missed the playoffs for 10 straight seasons — rebound somewhat at the start of a new season. Many convince themselves it will be different this year.
But with no significant player moves in the off-season, the dial didn’t move much going into this month’s training camp.
It’s three meaningless games into the pre-season, but you can start to feel the expectations begin to grow again. And one wonders if the betting line will start to show it, too.
The Oilers are currently at 25-to-1 odds to win the Stanley Cup.
There’s been a feeling around this team since the start of camp. The statements have been strong. And there’s at least the illusion, although they have yet to face anything resembling an NHL lineup, that you can see a return to form on the ice.
The Oilers, eight days from flying to Europe to start their season, opened their home pre-season schedule Thursday evening with the closest thing to an opening day lineup as any team has produced for an exhibition game yet this year.
There was a significant contrast to who was playing for the Oilers and who wasn’t dressing for the Jets.
The Jets left Patrick Laine, Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, Nikolaj Ehlers, Kyle Connor, Dustin Byfuglien and Connor Hellebuyck back in Winnipeg, where they’ll play the Oilers in a return visit Sunday. That will be the Oilers’ final pre-season game before they play Kolner Haie (Cologne Sharks) of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga prior to opening the season against the New Jersey Devils in Goteborg, Sweden.
For the Oilers, McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, Leon Draisaitl, Milan Lucic, Oscar Klefbom, Adam Larsson and Darnell Nurse were all in the lineup for the first time and No. 1 netminder Cam Talbot was in goal for a second straight game as head coach Todd McLellan made it a priority to get his No. 1 goalie ready for the season.
The beginning of the growing expectations began with words, such as the ones from NugentHopkins:
“This is the most intense I’ve seen our team come into a season before,” said The Nuge, entering his eighth season.
Virtually every veteran supplied a similar quote in the days since.
It’ll be interesting to watch those betting odds in the days, weeks and months ahead.
The cry all off-season was to find a right winger. Thursday, Ty Rattie scored two goals and added three assists.