The Edmonton Oilers are back at Rogers Place tonight for a 5 PM matchup with the Seattle Kraken, and the ask is pretty simple after Thursday’s 9-7 mess in Vancouver: dial back the chaos. Edmonton grabbed an 8-2 lead, then spent the rest of the night trying to hang on, turning what should have been a runaway into a nerve-rattler. Two points count the same no matter how they come, but this is probably not the blueprint anyone had in mind this early.
Even with the sloppiness, there’s real offense to like here. The Oilers have scored 14 goals while missing Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Matt Savoie, and Jason Dickinson from their Top-9, and the main engines have been driving the bus.
Evan Bouchard has eight points, Connor McDavid has seven, Leon Draisaitl has four, and Vasily Podkolzin has three goals. For a team missing that many regulars, getting that kind of production from the core has mattered.
Bouchard, in particular, has been on another level. He has four goals and four assists in two games, a pace nobody expects him to keep up, but it still has to be said: he has the most points in franchise history through the first two games of a season.
More than Gretzky. More than Kurri.
More than Connor and Leon. That’s the kind of start that jumps off the page.
McDavid looks like McDavid, Draisaitl is doing his thing, and Podkolzin has taken advantage of his power-play chance.
The problem is that Edmonton has also allowed 13 goals, and that’s where the opening stretch starts to get strange. After talking all summer about being better defensively and playing the right way, the Oilers have given up six in the opener and seven more in Vancouver.
Early-season hockey can be messy, sure, but this has gone well beyond ordinary rust. The defense and goaltending have both been too leaky.
Tristan Jarry finished game one with a .739 save percentage in a brutal overtime loss, and Devon Levi followed with a .682 in Vancouver. That has already reopened the same crease conversation Edmonton has been having for years.
Both goalies should be better than this, mostly because it would be hard not to be, but after one start apiece, nobody is exactly feeling great about it. The Oilers have seen too many nights where they did enough to win and still didn’t get the stop they needed.
At the same time, it’s not fair to pin all 13 goals on the netminders. Some of them are on the goalies, yes, but Edmonton also got loose with the puck and lost structure as the games went on.
They were good enough to win both nights in a lot of ways, but the details have not been clean. Tonight is a chance to start fixing that.
Keep it tight, play the full 60, and don’t decide that stretches of the game don’t matter just because the score looks comfortable.
Seattle arrives with a little momentum after a 6-1 win over Calgary on Thursday. The Kraken scored three times in the first period and three more in the third, finished with 32 shots, blocked 20, and went 1-for-5 on the power play.
Jordan Eberle, Vince Dunn, Frederick Gaudreau, Chandler Stephenson, Matty Beniers, and Kaapo Kakko all scored, so the offense came from all over the lineup. More importantly, Seattle kept pressing after taking the lead and never let Calgary back into it.
That part should matter to Edmonton. The Oilers just watched Vancouver stay in a game that had already tilted badly in the other direction, and Seattle showed the kind of habits that can bury a team once it’s down.
The Kraken are mostly running it back with the same core from last year, and whether that approach pays off is still an open question. But this isn’t a group Edmonton can afford to treat like an invitation to trade chances all night.
The good news for the Oilers is still pretty obvious: they’ve banked three of a possible four points, the offense is rolling, and the stars have started the season hot. The bad news is just as obvious: 14 goals for is fun, 13 against is not, and at some point the balance has to tilt the other way. If Edmonton can clean up the puck management, get a few more saves, and tighten the defensive details, they make life a lot easier on themselves.
There is one lineup wrinkle worth watching after the Vancouver game. Mukhamadullin struggled badly on Thursday, and that has plenty of Oilers fans wondering whether Ty Emberson will get back in. Emberson was solid and steady in that role last season, so there’s a clear case for him to draw in after the way his counterpart played.
Edmonton Oilers lineup: Podkolzin - McDavid - Draisaitl
Jones - Dach - Kapanen
Formenton - Michaels - Joseph
Howard - Samanski - Frederic
Ekholm - Bouchard
Shea - Murphy
Walman - Emberson
Jarry
Seattle Kraken lineup: McCann - Beniers - Kakko
McMann - Stephenson - Eberle
Wright - Catton - Winterton
Melanson - Gaudreau - Douglas
Dunn - Larsson
Evans - Montour
Lindgren - Fleury
Daccord
This is Edmonton’s first meeting with Seattle, and after what happened in Vancouver, the Oilers would be wise not to turn it into another track meet. The game can still be entertaining without being reckless. That would be a nice change.
In Other News...
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Sportsnets Elliotte Friedman said during a game broadcast that the club is exploring a lateral trade to rebalance the group, and the pressure point is clear: Edmonton has a pile of defensemen who could be exposed to waivers if the team keeps carrying them all. The situation does not sound like a long-term crisis, but it could still force the Oilers into making a move sooner than they would prefer. [Read more 🡒]
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Sid Seixeiro has once again fueled the speculation that McDavid could eventually leave Edmonton, even though there has been nothing from McDavid to suggest dissatisfaction or a desire to move on. He has stayed invested through the Oilers recent rough patches, which is exactly why the renewed chatter lands as more noise than evidence, even as the leagues cap outlook and team-building strategies start to shift around the edges. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Finally Found A Different Way To Win Against Seattle
For a team that has often needed a little flash to separate itself from Seattle, Wednesdays 3-1 win at Rogers Place looked a bit different. Owen Michaels got the Oilers on the board, Leon Draisaitl kept the pressure on, and Edmonton leaned into a physical, penalty-filled game that felt more like a grind than a showcase. Devon Levi handled his end cleanly enough, turning aside 19 shots as the Oilers improved to 2-0-1 and kept their strong home run against the Kraken rolling.
The part Edmonton will likely like most is that it did not have to chase the game the way it sometimes has against Seattle. The Oilers stayed patient through a tight third period, with Draisaitl and Connor McDavid eventually supplying the separation and finishing touch when the margin was still there to be claimed. It was the kind of result teams talk about wanting in the fall, a different route to the same two points, even if there was still plenty of bite in the game along the way. [Read more 🡒]