PROJECTED LINEUP: Oilers at Mammoth

Despite ending their five-game win streak on Saturday with a 5-1 defeat to the Golden Knights, the Oilers need to carry ahead their collective effort right into a closing push to win the Pacific Division title, having relied on your entire lineup to raise their video games to make up for the absences of Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman down the stretch.

“We’ve definitely taken steps in the right direction and playing more as a team,” Ryan Nugent-Hopkins mentioned. “Everybody has the same mindset and the same kind of attitude about things out there. So obviously, we got some work to do here in the next five to really solidify where we’re at, but I think it’s really coming together.”

Limiting the Mammoth’s rush probability and enjoying with pace on the forecheck to interrupt up unfastened pucks might be key for the Oilers in containing their red-hot offense, whereas additionally discovering a strategy to reinvigorate their energy play that is 1-for-19 within the 9 video games with out Draisaitl out there.

“If you look at the chances that we’ve had pretty much every night, we’ve had so many good looks, but the pucks aren’t going in right now,” Nugent-Hopkins mentioned of the facility play. “Obviously that is the place Leon actually modifications issues for us. He at all times finds methods to attain and create these actually excessive probability performs. But we have had lots of attractiveness.

“We’ve got to find ways to bear down and maybe get some more second opportunities and can play off that. But we’re not going to get frustrated. We’re just going to stick with it and keep shooting pucks, and eventually they’ll start going in.”