LAS VEGAS — In a town where people come from far and wide to leave their money behind, the Edmonton Oilers were all about reaping a return on their investment on the morning of a pivotal Game 5 in Las Vegas.
Both teams are missing their top-minute defenceman due to suspension, with Alex Pietrangelo banned for a game because of a wanton chop to the arm of Leon Draisaitl late in Game 4 and Darnell Nurse suspended for incurring an instigator penalty inside the final five minutes of that game.
Though there is legitimate debate surrounding the Nurse suspension, the one element of Pietrangelo’s act that can’t be missed is that he lost his cool after four games of being targeted with hits — both clean and not so clean — by forechecking Oilers forwards.
“When we’re playing the game the right way we put hard miles on the other team’s D corps,” began Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft. “And part of the hard miles is not wanting to go back and get (the puck). There’s going to be a physical investment. And I think what you see as the series move along is those investments start to pay dividends.
“We saw one of them at the end of the game the other day when their player (Pietrangelo) was undisciplined. I don’t think that just happened. I think that was four games worth of having to go back and take the cream.”
As for the Nurse suspension, the Oilers players had clearly made the decision not to whine about it today. “I probably feel a lot like Oiler fans feel,” said Connor McDavid, echoing his teammates.
Either way, it’s the first time I can remember a pair of playoff suspensions to each team’s lead horse on defence.
“It’s crazy, both teams losing their top D’s,” said Oilers defenceman Brett Kulak.
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The Oilers will re-align their defence with Kulak stepping up to play alongside Nurse’s partner, Cody Ceci, and Philip Broberg coming in to play on a third pairing with Vincent Desharnais. The Mattias Ekholm-Even Bouchard pair will get a few extra minutes here, for certain.
A year ago in a must-win Game 6 in L.A. — for which Nurse was suspended when he head-butted Phillip Danault — Kulak stepped in and played a fantastic game. That’s the hoped-for recipe tonight, with a series tied at 2-2 and Edmonton fixing to win one on the road.
“I’m gonna pair with the Ceci tonight, and I’m looking forward to it. The matchups will change a little bit, a few more minutes, but it’ll be good,” Kulak said. “(Nurse) had a suspension last year and we got the job done. We found a way and that’s what we’ve got to do here tonight. We’re all capable of taking on more and doing more. We’re all good players. We just have to come together as a team to get it done.”
The biggest difference between losing Nurse or Pietrangelo — who lead their teams with 23:24 and 24:37 minutes played per game respectively — is that Pietrangelo runs the Golden Knights No. 1 powerplay unit. Nurse is on Edmonton’s second unit, which seldom sees enough ice time to be a factor in games.
Ben Hutton draws into the Vegas lineup tonight, where the defence pairings will look like this:
Martinez—Hague
McNabb—Theodore
Hutton—Whitecloud
While Broberg has played eight playoff games this spring and averaged 7:00 per night, Hutton has only gotten into a single playoff game, in Round 1 versus Winnipeg.
Also, off the Vegas morning skate it looked like Teddy Blueger would come in to centre the fourth line, with Mike Amadio coming out. Oilers defenceman Markus Niemelainen stayed out after the morning skate with the spares, so an 11-and-7 alignment is unlikely for Edmonton.
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In a 2-2 series where we’ve yet to see a closely contested game, Evander Kane makes the obvious statement as we enter Game 5 here in Vegas:
“If we continue the back-and-forth trend we’re not going to win the series right? Just the way that pattern goes,” he reasoned. “So we’re gonna have to win two games (in a row) at some point here and we’d like it to be tonight.”
The Oilers, losers of seven straight Game 1’s, have built a reputation as a team that gets stronger as the series wears on. A year ago they won Game 6 and 7 versus L.A.; this spring they were down 2-1 in games to the Kings and 3-0 in Game 4 before storming back.
They’re hoping to put their foot on the gas tonight and be the first team to exert their will two games in a row.
“There are two good teams playing in this series. Two good teams trying to win games and trying to do similar things,” McDavid said. “One is trying to impose their game on the other, and that’s easier said than done. But I would expect us to play a real good game here tonight.”
Edmonton’s history on this is good. And it always helps when you’ve done it before.
“When there is a little bit of adversity, what we see is opportunity,” said Woodcroft, ever the motivator. “We’re excited about what’s before us here. We feel that we’re improving, we’re getting stronger, and our game is getting to where it needs to be and we’re excited about the opportunity.
“Is there a little bit of adversity? Yeah, and their team has that too. I think the team that handles that adversity better is going to be the one that is happiest at the end of the night.”
