PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Avalanche

The Edmonton Oilers return home to begin a two-game homestand at Rogers Place on Saturday night against the Colorado Avalanche.

You can watch the game on Sportsnet & Hockey Night in Canada at 8:00pm MT or listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 880 CHED.

Subscribe to Oilers+ to unlock exclusive live and behind-the-scenes content from inside the locker room.

PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Avalanche

EDMONTON, AB – Trying to finish how we’ve started.

The Edmonton Oilers are looking to find more consistency and urgency in their efforts over the full 60 minutes, and they’ll face a strong test on Saturday night when the Colorado Avalanche pay a visit to Rogers Place for the first match of their two-game homestand.

“It's a great challenge for us,” captain Connor McDavid said. “They're obviously a team that's playing really well. It’s something that's got our attention, and we're excited to go.”

“It’s all the things you can ask for,” defenceman Mattias Ekholm added. “It's going to be a good measuring stick for us as well. We know they’ve had a good start to the season, but usually, we have really good games against them.”

The Avalanche sit in the top spot in the NHL with an 8-1-5 record, with their only regulation defeat coming back on Oct. 25 in a 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins. Since then, Colorado has points in five straight games (3-0-2), having just bounced back from an overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks on the road last Saturday by ending the Tampa Bay Lightning's five-game winning streak at home with a 3-2 victory this past Tuesday.

Nathan MacKinnon (20), Cale Makar (18) and Martin Necas (18) all sit inside the top 15 for League scoring with a combined rating of plus-28, with netminder Scott Wedgewood doing the heavy lifting between the pipes for Colorado this season with eight victories in the absence of Mackenzie Blackwood, who missed the first month of the season due to injury.

The Oilers are coming off back-to-back losses in St. Louis and Dallas earlier this week, where both contests saw them concede multi-goal third-period leads.

It’s already happened six times this season where the Oilers have given up a two-goal lead in the final frame – four of those have resulted in defeats like on Tuesday and Wednesday night – that hasn’t sat well with the team’s coaches and players, who know they have to do a better job at closing out games after giving themselves a long enough grace period through the first month of the season to try to get themselves on track.

“Probably a little bit more desperate, a little more urgency to win games,” McDavid said. “I think we're putting ourselves in good spots. We're not closing them out, and that's a thing we're normally pretty good at. So, it hasn't been the trend this year, but something we’ve got to figure out.

“When you've done it six times, you’ve got to talk about it. It's a fair question and something that we want to figure out. As I said, we’ve done a good job of putting ourselves in some pretty good spots, but we haven't found a way to close them out. That's an area we’ve got to clean up.”

McDavid said after Friday’s practice at the Downtown Community Arena that it starts with using their speed against an equally fast and dangerous team in the Avalanche, wanting to see him & his teammates use it to their advantage at both ends of the rink for the full 60.

“Obviously, we can skate and they can skate,” he said. “They got some special players over there that really move well, and you see the young guys, they buzz around pretty good. We’ve got to start using it, though. Get in on the forecheck, get some pucks back and get through the neutral zone. That's been a real problem for us.

“We’ve got to break the puck out and move up the ice the whole way. We have to find a way to do a better job at it as the games are wearing on.”

For Head Coach Kris Knoblauch, playing fast begins from the back end with the defencemen moving the puck and jumping into the play, which was the focus of Friday’s practice after the Oilers returned to the ice at the DCA following a team off day.

After this two-game homestand, the Oilers embark on a season-long seven-game road trip out east, where practice time will be at a premium, so they’re eager to make the most out of the little time they have moving forward to work on areas they need to address.

“They have to be able to make plays,” Knoblauch said of the defence. “They’ve got to be able to get shots through, break out the puck well and score off the rush. Oftentimes, it's because the defencemen are joining and they might be even leading the rush or coming in late as a fourth man. But we want the defence to get involved, and the only way you can get involved is if you're skating.

“Today, we did have a lot more drills with our defencemen getting up in the play and getting them skating. But I think one of our strengths is our back end and how it can provide some offence. We have to play to that, but we also have to practice it, too.”

After the return of Alec Regula from injury this past Wednesday, Coach Knoblauch had him in a pairing with Darnell Nurse after liking what the two showed together early in the season, so he's interested to see how their partnership will shake out with another opportunity.

"They had a very strong game against Vancouver at home, and hopefully they can pick up where they left off," Knoblauch said. "We want to do it sooner than later, but we also want to give Reggie a little bit of time to get acclimated again. We spent so much time playing and not practicing that we just didn't want to put him in that position."

Knoblauch added that forward Mattias Janmark is "very close" to returning and could be back in the lineup either on Saturday against the Avalanche or on Monday versus the Blue Jackets, while Hyman could return "within the week" during Edmonton's upcoming road trip to the East Coast.