PREVIEW: Oilers at Blues

The Edmonton Oilers are in St. Louis on Monday night to take on the Blues at Enterprise Center.

You can watch the game on Sportsnet at 7:00 p.m. MT or listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 630 CHED.

Subscribe to Oilers+ to unlock the Pre-Game Show that will begin 30 minutes before puck-drop, along with more exclusive live and behind-the-scenes content.

PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Blues

ST. LOUIS, MO – The Edmonton Oilers will begin a short two-game road trip on Monday night at Enterprise Center against the St. Louis Blues following a 6-1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday afternoon where Connor McDavid temporarily took over the NHL’s scoring lead.

“You can never count Connor out or think he can't do something,” Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said following Saturday’s 6-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks.

You couldn’t have been faulted for thinking that the Oilers captain was going to be out of the NHL’s scoring race early in the year following Edmonton’s slow 3-9-1 start, seeing McDavid miss two games with an upper-body injury and record only 10 points (2G, 8A) through his first 11 games of the 2023-24 season.

Yet here we are once again seeing the five-time NHL scoring champion right in the thick of the race after being one of six Oilers who recorded multiple points on Saturday, registering his seventh straight multi-point game and coming within one goal of reaching the 30-goal plateau for the eighth straight season.

“He made it very difficult for himself to get to where he is in scoring right now, but I just don't have enough words or time to talk about what Connor can do.”

During Saturday’s matinée 6-1 victory over the Ducks, McDavid temporarily held the League scoring lead over Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon and Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov after picking up two goals and an assist to reach 125 points – now two behind MacKinnon with 10 regular-season games remaining.

McDavid finished the month of March with 31 points (7G. 24A) in 15 games – tied for the most in a calendar month during his career – and now has 60 points (18G, 42A) in March over the last two seasons, which is the most in the NHL by seven points ahead of his teammate Leon Draisaitl, who is now two points shy of reaching 100 for the fifth time in his career after picking up two assists against Anaheim.

"It's a position I've been in many times before, and we're playing for things bigger than that," McDavid said. "We're playing to make sure our game is in order and we're still playing for positioning. There's lots of hockey left, ten games left, and you never know what could happen coming down the stretch and we'll see what happens."

Together, McDavid and his Oilers teammates are focused on gearing up for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and pushing for the Pacific Division title, owning a 45-23-24 record and sitting six points back of the Canucks with two games in hand and a head-to-head matchup on Apr. 13 still to come against the division leaders.

Edmonton and St. Louis will wrap up their season series having split their two meetings this season, with the home team winning each game. 

The Blues find themselves on the fringe of the Wild Card race in the Western Conference, sitting five points adrift of Los Angeles for the final playoff spot after a costly 4-0 shutout defeat to the San Jose Sharks on Saturday dented their post-season chances.

The Blues have five players with at least 20 goals this season (Buchnevich - 26, Neighbours - 26, Kyrou - 25, Saad - 24, Thomas -23), with only the Stars having more such players.

St. Louis is 31-3-1 when scoring first this season, but during their last meeting with the Oilers on Feb. 28 it was one of those rare occurrences where they couldn't hold onto an early lead.

Robert Thomas and Pavel Buchnevich each scored in the first five minutes of the meeting at Rogers Place before Zach Hyman scored his first of two goals with less than two minutes left in the opening period. Hyman levelled the score just 4:54 into the second period with his  40th of the season.

McDavid ended an 11-game goalless drought with 26 seconds left in overtime, scraping one off the left shoulder of Jordan Binnington and in to give Edmonton a 3-2 victory.