OILERS VS. WILD TONIGHT

Dubnyk Gets The Start...

It's good to see that the Oilers are staying with the development plan and playing guys like Dubnyk a lot. Dubnyk has earned the ice-time when you look at his numbers for this year .917% SV%, 2.81 GAA. This ranks him 20th in the league. 


Khabibulin's numbers are .894 SV%, 3.46 GAA. which ranks him 43rd in the league. I should qualify that these ranks are based on SV% numbers only. And to be fair, Khabibulin has played twice as many games as Dubnyk.


With only 39 games left in the season...to get a real gauge of Dubnyk's ability, I believe he needs to start at 20 of these games. My guess is he'll get 15. but he should get more back-to-back starts to get a better sense of if he can get hot or cold and get into a "groove."


Special Teams Will Be Key Tonight...

With the power-play being 29th in the league and 0 for the last 38 attempts, we will need this to get going tonight. If we hope to win any games down the stretch, this power-play has to figure it out. Maybe Tom Renney will switch up the top line unit to give us a different look on the PP tonight. 


I wonder if Zack Stortini will actually get to play tonight in lieu of J.F. Jacques. I personally don't see what the attraction of playing Jacques is over Storts?? At least with Scortini you know what you're going to get on a night-to-night basis. Good effort, good fore-check, a lot of chirping the opposition and the willingness to stand up for his team-mates. With Jacques...you can't say that you will get any of that on a regular basis. Maybe they are playing Jacques more is to see if he can pull it together, as he's been injured most of his career and the Oil don't truly know what they have yet. But from what I've seen this year...it ain't enough, whatever "it" is.


GO Oilers GO!