BLOG: Preparation begins for the Golden Knights

LOS ANGELES, CA - Fresh off Saturday's elimination of the Los Angeles Kings, the sights of the Edmonton Oilers are already set on the Vegas Golden Knights.
As satisfying as it was to knock out their rivals in Los Angeles for a second straight year, the team and the coaching staff knows the work has only just begun.
"You enjoy it for a little bit, and then your mind gets going towards the next series and preparing for a really good Vegas Golden Knights team that finished first in the conference for a reason. So, our preparations have already begun," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said on Sunday before the team travelled to La Vegas in the afternoon.
The Oilers have a daunting task to overcome and continue their run towards hockey's holy grail. Vegas finished the NHL regular season with a 51-22-9 record and a Western Conference-leading 111 points. The Golden Knights are also fresh off of dispatching the Winnipeg Jets in just five games, winning the last four games of the series and scoring at least four goals in every one of those contests.
The Sin City squad also poses a much different challenge than the rigidly-structured 1-3-1 neutral-zone forecheck that the Oilers just faced in Los Angeles.
"I think they're a big difference actually," Woodcroft said. "Different styles, different challenges, different problems that they present and they seem to be firing on all cylinders. It's going to be a tall task but we're up to it."

While the Oilers coach wouldn't go in-depth into his personal scouting report of the Golden Knights and their successes, Woodcroft briefly touched upon the problems they could pose the Oilers starting next week.
"I think they've got a back end that seems to be involved in all three zones, and they seem to have a deep forward grouping that plays a pressure-based game," Woodcroft said. "They're well-coached, and they finished at the top of the conference for a reason. They've had a pretty steady year, and they get contributions up and down the lineup."
Woodcroft continued: "I think it's a different animal this series than what we saw versus LA, and that's just two teams that play a stylistically different game. What I was happy about our team in this past series was that we were willing to adapt. The other team threw certain things at us and we weren't stubborn. We weren't stuck in one way of doing things. We adapted to what the environment called for, and we did what we had to do to come out of that series and beat a very good LA Kings team."
Edmonton has had their fair share of success against the Golden Knights this year with a 3-0-1 record and having taken seven out of a possible eight points from their divisional foe. However, Vegas is healthier and deeper than they have been at any point in the regular season with the talented Mark Stone recovering from a back injury in time for Game 1 vs. the Jets.
The Golden Knight have as layered of an offence that you can find in the Western conference with legitimate NHL scorers in Stone, Jack Eichel, Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson, Chandler Stephenson, Reilly Smith, and Phil Kessel. Their roster features no 30 goalscorers, but 12 different players with double digits and 10 forwards with at least 14 tallies.

Luckily for the Oilers, they will have a few days rest and recover for Game 1 in Las Vegas which is still yet to be scheduled. The Golden Knights haven't played a game since April 27 courtesy of finishing off the Jets in Game 5, so the Oilers avoiding a seventh and deciding game against the Kings could prove key in their preparation for the Pacific Division-winners.
"I think in the playoffs, each game that you play takes a mental, emotional, and physical toll. So the shorter you can keep series, the less of a tax or toll you're putting on your team. That was an elimination game for us," Woodcroft said.
"I like the fact that we had a killer instinct. I like the way we came out in the first period. We were there to win. It wasn't a perfect game, believe me, it wasn't perfect. There are things that we can clean up, but I liked our team's mindset and we went in there with the thought process of choking a team out. That's what we did last night."