PREVIEW: Oilers at Canucks (Game 1)

The Edmonton Oilers face the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night at Rogers Arena in Game 1 of their second-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

You can watch the game on Sportsnet & Hockey Night in Canada at 8:00 p.m. MT or listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 630 CHED.

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PREVIEW: Oilers at Canucks (Game 1)

VANCOUVER, BC – The time for debate has come and gone. Let’s just drop the puck.

“I don’t know how much more we need to talk about this,” Leon Draisaitl said on Monday. “We’re going into Round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. We don’t care about what happened in the regular season, and I bet you that they don’t either, as much as you think. We’re a different team now. It’s going to be tight-checking, with two really good teams going at it.

A rivalry unseen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 1992 will return on Wednesday night when the Edmonton Oilers and the Vancouver Canucks renew post-season pleasantries in Game 1 of their second-round series at Rogers Arena, and the Oilers won’t need any extra motivation in proving they’re the better team over seven games of a post-season series despite a one-sided regular-season affair that went firmly in the Canucks’ favour with all four victories – three of which being during the Oilers’ 2-8-1 start in their first 11 games.

"The team that plays the better hockey will win," Draisaitl added.

It’s been so long since those early-season meetings for Mattias Ekholm that it’s difficult to describe the difference now, recalling Edmonton's 8-1 loss in the season opener in Vancouver that he missed because of a hip flexor injury and the two others he played in – 4-3 and 6-2 defeats – that contributed to their challenging start to the year and a coaching change soon after.

“It's hard to compare,” he said after Saturday’s practice at the Downtown Community Arena. “I think we've shown over the last few months that we’re a different group. We have a different mindset. We’re playing with a lot more pace than I think we did at the start.

“It's difficult. It feels like years ago back to the start of the season, so it's hard to remember. I don't even remember the games.”

The arrival of Kris Knoblauch behind the Oilers' bench on Nov. 12 sparked a 46-18-5 run over the rest of the regular season for the Oilers, having been near the bottom of the NHL standings at the time of his hiring before being getting back on course to clinch a spot in the playoffs and compete for the Pacific Division.

"I think we're really confident in our group. We love playing for each other. We have a great sense of self-belief in the locker room and confidence," Ekholm said. "And I think that all comes from what you do throughout the season as you build your team, and that adversity helped us help build who we are. So with that said, it's up to us to maintain the pace and it's going to be a great challenge."

The Canucks had a lot of early offensive success but became a lot more defensively solid as the regular season progressed, using a towering blueline that boasts Tyler Myers (6-foot-8), Nikita Zadorov (6-foot-6) and Carson Soucy (6-foot-5) to provide a lot of reach around the net-front area which showed in their hybrid system that kept the Nashville Predators quiet in their first-round series.

Quinn Hughes led the regular-season series in scoring against the Oilers with eight points and has seven in these playoffs, coming off an impressive 92-point season that will likely land him the Norris Trophy as the League's top defenceman.

"I think he's just a guy that's incredibly mobile, specifically on the offensive blueline, and he's a smaller guy, which makes him a little bit harder to hit and to find," Evander Kane said." So you just have to be aware of him. He has a really good shot from the point too, and he likes to make those little quick plays and give and go a lot. So a really dynamic player and somebody that we're gonna have to be aware of."

Offensively as a whole, the Canucks were only able to average 20.2 shots and score 13 goals in six games against Nashville, with Elias Pettersson (who missed Tuesday's practice for Vancouver with an illness) having yet to score a goal in these playoffs.

This high-power series could come down to how each team's stars perform, and Edmonton's elite in Connor McDavid (12 points), Leon Draisaitl (10 points), Evan Bouchard (nine points) and Zach Hyman (seven goals) came to play in the first round – contributing to Edmonton's 9-for-20 power play (45.0 percent) that dismantled the King in conjunction with their perfect 11-for-11 penalty kill.

“Vancouver was one of the better teams defensively in the NHL during the regular season, and you see it in the playoffs. They don't give much room,” Knoblauch said. “I know they were getting a lot of attention for not getting shots on net, but they're a very good team. They've got some game-breakers who can open the game up with their offensive abilities, but as a whole, their defensive game is very solid and we saw a really good defensive team in LA. We're going to see another one in this series against Vancouver.”

It’s only the fifth time in the last 30 years that two Canadian teams have met in the second round of the playoffs or later, and Edmonton will want to repeat their involvement the previous time it happened during the 2024 Second Round when they eliminated the Calgary Flames in five games. The only exception might belong to Game 1 of that series, where Edmonton and Calgary combined for 15 goals in a 9-6 defeat that included three goals from the Flames in a 6:05 span of the first period.

Kane recalls the moment clearly and how it lit a fire under the Oilers to come back in convincing fashion over the next four games to extinguish their provincial rivals with McDavid’s infamous ‘Game winner, series winner!’ in overtime of Game 5 that sent them to the Western Conference Final.

While that Battle of Alberta happened years ago now, Kane says he and his teammates won’t be short on energy or emotion to begin a brand-new series tonight versus their West Coast rivals and his hometown team.

“If you go to the Calgary series, it was probably halfway through the first period and that was a real back-and-forth game,” Kane said. “Obviously, it was two teams who didn't like each other very much, and I think with Vancouver and our team, it’s probably going to be really easy to muster up.”

“I think anytime two Canadian teams get together, especially in the playoffs, there's that little extra and you’ve got to enjoy it and try to use it even more as leverage to play your best game. And obviously being in Vancouver, I get to have some friends and family in the stands and be in front of a very hostile environment in Vancouver, so that'll be fun.”

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, also a Vancouver-area product from Burnaby, says he severed ties to his local team long ago and is also planning on using the atmosphere to help build some extra excitement for Game 1. With the support that the Oilers have on the West Coast, that will surely include a lot of blue and orange in the stands at Rogers Arena.

“I expect it to be loud for sure, on both sides,” he said. “I know the first round in Vancouver, from what I heard it was a great atmosphere, so we're excited. We can feed off the crowd either way. I think it gives you energy. Two western Canadian teams, so it's going to be fun.”