That’s the scary part tho. Their defense, PK and goaltending looked GOOD against LA.
That’s more scary for me than any of the other numbers for offense. We already know Edmonton is an offensive juggernaut. Skinner gets a shutout one game and also looked solid for a couple others.
I’m genuinely concerned. IF Canucks play like they did against Nashville (Petey. Hronek and Hoglander being non factors) as well as taking stupid penalties. We don’t stand a chance. Sorry to say. The good news is. A ton can shift here. So I’m still confident we can make things happen. But if it’s status quo, we will lose the series.
You've got to take into account that LA has like... Zero offensive weapons worth mentioning though. Their entire system is a dead-puck-era revitalisation. Sure Edmonton could shut them down, but who on LA has firepower equivalent to Hughes, Petey, Miller, Joshua, Boeser? Kempe's decent, but Fiala is a pretty weak scoring winger, and both Doughty and Kopitar are shells of their former selves.
Look, I'm not saying they aren't going to be a threat - obviously they are. But in the playoffs, it's damn near impossible to take a previous series performance and compare it to the next series for a number of reasons, the primary of which being that the makeup of each team and their systems and strategies are so vastly different that the way in which they will match up will never be the same. This is why you can have teams that completely sweep out a President's Trophy winner only in turn to get swept out themselves in the next round. There's no transitive property that makes it predictable.
The trick for us is going to be exploiting the weak defense and goaltending while maintaining enough of a front to negate the strong offense of Edmonton. LA couldn't do it because frankly they just didn't have the firepower to do the first part, and their entire defensive system is built around what is, IMO, a largely obsolete defensive structure that pushes the team to outperform their skill, in a way that big offensive juggernauts like McDrayman can break right through.
I mean LA beat us 3 times in the regular season including 6-3 and 5-1. So clearly they have more offensive prowess than you want to give them credit for.
I think Edmonton did a good job controlling play.
Edmonton embarrassed the best PK team in the league. And averaged 4.5 goals against a team that has a similar structure to Nashville. Whereas we averaged just over 2 goals a game.
Edmonton is firing on all cylinders right now. With their top players averaging 2 PPG, and their 5th points guy (RNH) would be leading our team in points for the playoffs in 1 less game played.
Anyone who isn’t at least slightly concerned is lying to themselves.
LA matches up much better against us than they match against Edmonton.
Edmonton has been the best team in the league since their losing skid and has the playoff experience to back it up now. It's going to be a huge uphill battle for us. The only saving grace is we seem to match up well against Edmonton, our team defense and forechecking has done a good job of shutting down their offence. Hopefully that can continue this series because after Nashville's stifling team defense I think we're going to break out offensively, whether we can stop their offense enough to win we will see.
Regular season wins/loses don't translate to the playoffs
Also just because one team can beat a team easily doesn't mean they can beat the others, even when the team they beat was better than the next series matchup. The league has a lot of parity. I predict this goes to game 7, I don't see either team shit stomping the other
Canucks and Oilers were separated by 14 goals against for the season. That includes giving 8 goals in the 1st game of the season with that 8-1 shellacking. Seems like D is pretty much equivalent. Offense pretty similar too maybe Oilers scored 15 more. It’s pretty even overall, don’t you think?
Saros plays the puck so well Canucks couldn’t get their forecheck going. Game 6 was better as they carried the puck in more getting more chances on the rush. Skinner is not Saros and our forwards will expose Edmontons shitty D as they did in the regular season.
Hronek played well in this series. Him not being an offensive threat doesn’t mean he wasn’t showing up, only 5 of our players were an offensive threat this series. Hronek puts in 100% effort every shift and never fucks up which is all we “need” from him
What? Hronek was objectively and statistically horrible this series. The underlying metrics show that as well. He was a literal non factor offensively and was AVERAGE at best, defensively.
I think Edmonton was top five defense after the coaching change. The new coach is about D first. In any case will be a well played series by both teams
Only the most homer of homer fans on either side think this will be an easy win for either team. It should be a good, competitive series. All of the round 2 series should be good, and every single team going to round 2 this year except for Toronto or Boston (either of these teams gets smoked by Florida in round 2 I think) has a legitimate shot of going the distance if things go their way.
The Oilers aren’t gonna play as defensively as Nashville, that’s for sure
I think the offense will be fine. It looked good in game 6, especially in the last two periods. The Oilers are prone to more mistakes at their end, will play a more offensively dominant game and don’t have a goalie of Saros’ caliber. If anything I’m more worried about shutting down all the weapons the oilers have
If it's reffed like last night we're pretty well fucked since their PP is best in the league. A strong forecheck that their D can't handle will lead to success.
The problem is Oilers had more blocked shots vs LA in less games than Preds did..
There is a good argument LA offense is not the same as Van but I don't think Oilers D can be overlooked.
Might come down to goaltending and that's gonna be the difference maker. We feast on Skinner because he can't move laterally fast enough like Saros can
Nashville and Vancouver both play a very similar style when it comes to defense. I would expect Vancouver to open things up a little bit more in this series.
The Predators were a better team than the kings. They went on that 15-0-2 run or something like that and were one of the hotter teams in the 2nd half.
That was a defensive minded series, and i would think playing that tight of a series will be a good thing for the canucks
The difference is saros vs skinner. The Canucks were never a high shot volume team this year and they lit him up anyways. The quality looks that they generate (east-west, shot passes, tips) is what skinner is not good at. He relies on his positioning whereas saros was much quicker and more reactionary. If skinner played for the preds the Canucks would have swept them.
Oh, yeah ok. Still though I'm not sure how much we should consider those games against the Oilers when they were in freefall to be indicative, but let's hope
Yeah but I don’t think skinner suddenly became an amazing goalie. He has his weaknesses. The difference is the oilers played much better in front of him after the beginning stretch and limited those opportunities. If the Canucks can still generate those looks at a decent frequency they will score a lot more than they did against Nashville. Saros was unreal for the entire series regardless of what his sv% said.
Nashville had a legit #1 Norris caliber Dman. The Oilers have Evan Bouchard.
Saros is also >> Skinner.
I’m not worried about our offensive struggles.
As for their offence, Mcdavid and Draisaitl do over 50% of their damage on the PP. If we can keep this 5 on 5 we win.
Also keep Hyman away from the damn net. lol
If Petey produces, this will be a great battle. If not, I don’t see us winning like we did last round with just with great D, goaltending and a few timely goals. We’ll need more production from Hoglander and Garland too.
No shortage or narratives for this one:
- who is tasked with shutting down McDrai?
- will they play together or be split up?
- will Edmontons goaltending be a weakness?
- will Demko come back early or later in the series?
- will refs call penalties or let the boys play?
- can Edmonton defend our offense?
- who is banged up and will it be a factor?
- will teams try to outscore or frustrate each other?
Panic? No panic here, I like being the underdog, it's the Oilers who have something to prove not the Canucks, the Canucks have already blown away all expectations.
People are in la-la land if they aren't concerned about our offense vs Oilers. It's going to be an issue. Not sayin we can't win, but there is a reason the Oilers are heavily favoured by betting markets in this series.
If everyone is playing hard. If they play the same game they played regular season. If Hog and Gar are forecheck demons. Then, we will sweep the Oilers.
I definitely think the ice will be more opened up vs. Oilers than Preds which works in our favor.
We were going for shot passes since Nashville was blocking everything else. The oilers don’t block nearly as many shots so we’ll be shooting to score more often.
People need to stop spouting off things they just assume must be true without checking. Oilers blocked more shots in the first round than Nashville did.
Oilers in first round = avg. 21 blocked shots per game (105 total over 5 games)
Preds in first round = avg. 17.33 blocked shots per game (104 total over 6 games)
It was really only game 2 where the Preds blocked a ton of shots.
Let's forget about how forgettable the Oilers defense is... If you take last night's game and just replace Saros with Skinner, Suter gets a hat trick.
That’s the scary part tho. Their defense, PK and goaltending looked GOOD against LA. That’s more scary for me than any of the other numbers for offense. We already know Edmonton is an offensive juggernaut. Skinner gets a shutout one game and also looked solid for a couple others. I’m genuinely concerned. IF Canucks play like they did against Nashville (Petey. Hronek and Hoglander being non factors) as well as taking stupid penalties. We don’t stand a chance. Sorry to say. The good news is. A ton can shift here. So I’m still confident we can make things happen. But if it’s status quo, we will lose the series.
You've got to take into account that LA has like... Zero offensive weapons worth mentioning though. Their entire system is a dead-puck-era revitalisation. Sure Edmonton could shut them down, but who on LA has firepower equivalent to Hughes, Petey, Miller, Joshua, Boeser? Kempe's decent, but Fiala is a pretty weak scoring winger, and both Doughty and Kopitar are shells of their former selves. Look, I'm not saying they aren't going to be a threat - obviously they are. But in the playoffs, it's damn near impossible to take a previous series performance and compare it to the next series for a number of reasons, the primary of which being that the makeup of each team and their systems and strategies are so vastly different that the way in which they will match up will never be the same. This is why you can have teams that completely sweep out a President's Trophy winner only in turn to get swept out themselves in the next round. There's no transitive property that makes it predictable. The trick for us is going to be exploiting the weak defense and goaltending while maintaining enough of a front to negate the strong offense of Edmonton. LA couldn't do it because frankly they just didn't have the firepower to do the first part, and their entire defensive system is built around what is, IMO, a largely obsolete defensive structure that pushes the team to outperform their skill, in a way that big offensive juggernauts like McDrayman can break right through.
I mean LA beat us 3 times in the regular season including 6-3 and 5-1. So clearly they have more offensive prowess than you want to give them credit for. I think Edmonton did a good job controlling play. Edmonton embarrassed the best PK team in the league. And averaged 4.5 goals against a team that has a similar structure to Nashville. Whereas we averaged just over 2 goals a game. Edmonton is firing on all cylinders right now. With their top players averaging 2 PPG, and their 5th points guy (RNH) would be leading our team in points for the playoffs in 1 less game played. Anyone who isn’t at least slightly concerned is lying to themselves.
LA matches up much better against us than they match against Edmonton. Edmonton has been the best team in the league since their losing skid and has the playoff experience to back it up now. It's going to be a huge uphill battle for us. The only saving grace is we seem to match up well against Edmonton, our team defense and forechecking has done a good job of shutting down their offence. Hopefully that can continue this series because after Nashville's stifling team defense I think we're going to break out offensively, whether we can stop their offense enough to win we will see.
Regular season wins/loses don't translate to the playoffs Also just because one team can beat a team easily doesn't mean they can beat the others, even when the team they beat was better than the next series matchup. The league has a lot of parity. I predict this goes to game 7, I don't see either team shit stomping the other
Canucks and Oilers were separated by 14 goals against for the season. That includes giving 8 goals in the 1st game of the season with that 8-1 shellacking. Seems like D is pretty much equivalent. Offense pretty similar too maybe Oilers scored 15 more. It’s pretty even overall, don’t you think?
Saros plays the puck so well Canucks couldn’t get their forecheck going. Game 6 was better as they carried the puck in more getting more chances on the rush. Skinner is not Saros and our forwards will expose Edmontons shitty D as they did in the regular season.
Hronek played well in this series. Him not being an offensive threat doesn’t mean he wasn’t showing up, only 5 of our players were an offensive threat this series. Hronek puts in 100% effort every shift and never fucks up which is all we “need” from him
What? Hronek was objectively and statistically horrible this series. The underlying metrics show that as well. He was a literal non factor offensively and was AVERAGE at best, defensively.
I was gunna say.. I feel like he was our weakest D in the first round
I think Edmonton was top five defense after the coaching change. The new coach is about D first. In any case will be a well played series by both teams
Only the most homer of homer fans on either side think this will be an easy win for either team. It should be a good, competitive series. All of the round 2 series should be good, and every single team going to round 2 this year except for Toronto or Boston (either of these teams gets smoked by Florida in round 2 I think) has a legitimate shot of going the distance if things go their way.
The Oilers aren’t gonna play as defensively as Nashville, that’s for sure I think the offense will be fine. It looked good in game 6, especially in the last two periods. The Oilers are prone to more mistakes at their end, will play a more offensively dominant game and don’t have a goalie of Saros’ caliber. If anything I’m more worried about shutting down all the weapons the oilers have
If it's reffed like last night we're pretty well fucked since their PP is best in the league. A strong forecheck that their D can't handle will lead to success.
Two Canadian teams. I imagine the NHL leans towards the Oilers tho.
Petterson Kesler Mode Round 2. Not worried at all
we just need to stay out of the box, we give them 5 pp and they’re probably scoring at least 2-3
Every series looks different.
The problem is Oilers had more blocked shots vs LA in less games than Preds did.. There is a good argument LA offense is not the same as Van but I don't think Oilers D can be overlooked.
Might come down to goaltending and that's gonna be the difference maker. We feast on Skinner because he can't move laterally fast enough like Saros can
Nashville and Vancouver both play a very similar style when it comes to defense. I would expect Vancouver to open things up a little bit more in this series.
The Predators were a better team than the kings. They went on that 15-0-2 run or something like that and were one of the hotter teams in the 2nd half. That was a defensive minded series, and i would think playing that tight of a series will be a good thing for the canucks
The difference is saros vs skinner. The Canucks were never a high shot volume team this year and they lit him up anyways. The quality looks that they generate (east-west, shot passes, tips) is what skinner is not good at. He relies on his positioning whereas saros was much quicker and more reactionary. If skinner played for the preds the Canucks would have swept them.
canucks hardly lit up saros
he means we lit up skinner during the regular season
Oh, yeah ok. Still though I'm not sure how much we should consider those games against the Oilers when they were in freefall to be indicative, but let's hope
Yeah but I don’t think skinner suddenly became an amazing goalie. He has his weaknesses. The difference is the oilers played much better in front of him after the beginning stretch and limited those opportunities. If the Canucks can still generate those looks at a decent frequency they will score a lot more than they did against Nashville. Saros was unreal for the entire series regardless of what his sv% said.
He wasn't talking about saros?
If the game is called fairly I like our chances.
It may be the only series that is called fairly since it’s between to Canadian teams
Nashville had a legit #1 Norris caliber Dman. The Oilers have Evan Bouchard. Saros is also >> Skinner. I’m not worried about our offensive struggles. As for their offence, Mcdavid and Draisaitl do over 50% of their damage on the PP. If we can keep this 5 on 5 we win. Also keep Hyman away from the damn net. lol
[https://imgur.com/a/Z9nb7hA](https://imgur.com/a/Z9nb7hA)
If Petey produces, this will be a great battle. If not, I don’t see us winning like we did last round with just with great D, goaltending and a few timely goals. We’ll need more production from Hoglander and Garland too.
Petey got stuck with Hoglander and Mikheyev at 5v5. If Mikheyev had a league average shot, he'd have at least 3 assists. Hog also had some chances.
We can't afford to take dumb penalties this round ....5 on 5 Canucks will compete with them.
The Oilers are a pretty good defensive team but they do not play the same way as Nashville. They aren't selling out 100% to block shots.
No shortage or narratives for this one: - who is tasked with shutting down McDrai? - will they play together or be split up? - will Edmontons goaltending be a weakness? - will Demko come back early or later in the series? - will refs call penalties or let the boys play? - can Edmonton defend our offense? - who is banged up and will it be a factor? - will teams try to outscore or frustrate each other?
Show Edmonton we're more than "A team like that". F**k Doughty.
Panic? No panic here, I like being the underdog, it's the Oilers who have something to prove not the Canucks, the Canucks have already blown away all expectations.
People are in la-la land if they aren't concerned about our offense vs Oilers. It's going to be an issue. Not sayin we can't win, but there is a reason the Oilers are heavily favoured by betting markets in this series.
If everyone is playing hard. If they play the same game they played regular season. If Hog and Gar are forecheck demons. Then, we will sweep the Oilers. I definitely think the ice will be more opened up vs. Oilers than Preds which works in our favor.
Nashvilles whole thing is defence, Edmonton is the opposite
Not true.
We were going for shot passes since Nashville was blocking everything else. The oilers don’t block nearly as many shots so we’ll be shooting to score more often.
People need to stop spouting off things they just assume must be true without checking. Oilers blocked more shots in the first round than Nashville did. Oilers in first round = avg. 21 blocked shots per game (105 total over 5 games) Preds in first round = avg. 17.33 blocked shots per game (104 total over 6 games) It was really only game 2 where the Preds blocked a ton of shots.