Don’t read too much into pre-season
On Friday against a second rate lineup of Vancouver Canucks who didn’t get picked to take a trip to China, Kailer Yamamoto was a world-beater.
The Edmonton Oilers’ firstround, No. 22 overall, pick in the 2017 draft, scored two goals to lead the team to a 5-3 win. They were his third and fourth goals in three pre-season games.
A significant percentage of the fans leaving Rogers Place decided the kid should now make the team.
On Saturday night, essentially against the AHL Manitoba Moose, something similar happened with the Oilers’ No. 4 overall 2016 draft choice Jesse Puljujarvi.
After the grand total of four and a half periods together, it appeared that head coach Todd McLellan came to the conclusion that the reduced rate replacement for Jordan Eberle, Ryan Strome, had no chemistry with Connor McDavid.
Puljujarvi suddenly found himself on the No. 1 line with McDavid and Pat Maroon.
All of a sudden, the two appeared to make magic and Puljujarvi scored two goals and added an assist to win first star honours and lead the Oilers to a 6-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets understudies.
Again, fans left the rink figuring that Puljujarvi not only wouldn’t be returning to Bakersfield to be a Condor this year, but they’d maybe just watched McDavid effectively choose his rightwinger.
Being a card-carrying member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association of 40-some years who believes that people in my profession should not actually begin pounding their prose until the start of the regular season to avoid such rushes to judgment, I believe that 18-year-old Yamamoto will still be returning to junior hockey and that 19-yearold Puljujarvi, while he might not start the season in Bakersfield, isn’t likely to start on the first line.
The problem here is that the Oilers keep playing impostors dressed in NHL uniforms.
While the performances of both prospects should make Oilers fans delighted and excited for the future, your correspondent decided to put the question direct to McLellan after the game Saturday evening.
“Have you had enough NHL calibre opposition to be able to properly … ”
That’s as far as I got.
“No,” he said.
“We haven’t been there yet,” he said of the now 5-0 leagueleading pre-season team that has three exhibition games remaining before the regular season begins.
The Vancouver Canucks and Los Angeles Kings have to fly all the way to Shanghai and Beijing to do it, but they’ve now played two games against real NHL lineups. The Oilers have played zero.
“It’s been good for Jesse and Yamo to face this level of competition to this point because it gives them time to feel confident. It gives both time to feel like they belong.”
McLellan doesn’t think there’s any conspiracy involved in the steady stream of weaker lineups iced against the Oilers in some sort of retaliation for not bringing McDavid to their buildings or to impede the Oilers’ progress leading into the season.
“Teams play better lineups at home. We want to show our fans during exhibition season that we’re putting stronger teams out
It’s been good for Jesse and Yamo to face this level of competition to this point because it gives them time to feel confident.
at home. I thought the toughest group of players we faced was the Winnipeg team in Winnipeg. That was our best evaluation tool to this point.”
(McLellan, incidentally, explained that the move of Puljujarvi to replace Strome on the McDavid line was the old ‘Get-A-Guy-Out-Of-A-SlumpBy-Putting-Him-With-Gretzky’ move: “We were trying to get Jesse going, and obviously, he got a bit of a spark there. He worked well with Connor. You have to remember that Jesse is 19 years old. He’s still figuring some things out. I think he’s getting closer, but he still has to close the gap a little bit.”)
McLellan said the way they’re drawing AHL/junior opposition has resulted in trying to provide NHL calibre competition in practices.
“We have an ‘A’ group and a ‘B’ group in practice. What they may not get in the games they do get in practice,” he said. “It also allows us to practice our power play and penalty kills that we’ll start the season with.”
On Monday, against Carolina, is the final home pre-season game while the Oilers wrap up the silly season with a game against the Hurricanes in Saskatoon Wednesday and against the China Canucks Saturday in Vancouver.
McLellan is hopeful his hockey club will finally face a reasonable facsimile of an NHL lineup here against Carolina.
“(Hurricanes coach) Billy Peters and I talked about this game coming up back in August and he said he’ll probably dress a pretty strong team here and maybe not so strong in Saskatoon,” McLellan said. “With that in mind, we’ll probably match up and have good games.”