The Edmonton Oilers prepare to host the league-leading Boston Bruins at Rogers Place on Monday night to open up a three-game homestand and challenging seven-game stretch against playoff contenders over the next two weeks.
You can watch the game on Sportsnet West or listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 630 CHED, at 6:30 p.m. MT.
Subscribe to Oilers+ to unlock the Pre-Game Show that will begin at 6:00 p.m. MT, along with more exclusive live and behind-the-scenes content.

YOUR GAME-DAY ESSENTIALS

GAME DAY VIDEO
OILERS TODAY | Pre-Game vs. BOS
PRE-GAME RAW | Coach Woodcroft
PRE-GAME RAW | Brett Kulak
PRE-GAME RAW | Darnell Nurse
RECENT VIDEOS
PRACTICE | Busy week ahead
RAW | Coach Jay Woodcroft 02.26.23
RAW | Ryan Nugent-Hopkins 02.26.23
RAW | Leon Draisaitl 02.26.23
RAW | Darnell Nurse 02.26.23
BY THE NUMBERS
Oilers Statistics
Bruins Statistics
Stats Comparison
Game Notes
RECENT BLOGS & ARTICLES
BLOG: Oilers ready to run the gauntlet
GAME RECAP: Blue Jackets 6, Oilers 5
VIEWING INFORMATION
You can watch Monday's game on Sportsnet West at 6:30 PM MT.

INSIDE THE OILERS

News and notes from Sunday's practice at Rogers Place, where both players & coaches spoke toward the upcoming gauntlet of tough opponents for the Oilers over their next seven games.
>> READ MORE IN THE INSIDE THE OILERS BLOG

PRE-GAME REPORT

EDMONTON, AB - Monday night's game at Rogers Place is a must-see matchup on the NHL schedule.
The Oilers will pit their top offence against the stingiest defence and league-leaders in the Boston Bruins. Edmonton has scored 106 goals more this season than Boston has allowed (230-124), but which of the two elite units will come out on top will be top-tier theatre on ice.
"It's one you look forward to for sure. Anytime a top team in the league is coming in, it's always fun. Every shift is going to be competitive and it's nice to see," defenceman Brett Kulak said about the heavyweight clash. "We haven't seen them yet this year, watched a couple of clips of them on TV but that's about it. It's one I think we're all excited for."
The Bruins aren't just a lockdown, muck-it-up defensive side. The squad also sports the league's third-ranked offence with 219 goals scored this season, contributing to their far-and-away NHL best goal differential of plus-95.
"I think they're a very balanced team. They can hit you in different ways. They play the game simple. It's simple but done very well, and just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy to do," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said. "They're a team that I believe is one that is at the evolutionary stage where they don't beat themselves and there's nothing for free out there when you play them. So you're going to have to play a really good game in order to win."
Not enough teams have been able to play a really good game against a Boston team that are in the middle of a borderline historic season. Their 45 wins through 58 games are the most all-time by any NHL team, and their 63-win pace would be a league record.
"This is a team that does not beat itself, that we're playing," Woodcroft said. "They're a team that is going to make you earn every square inch of ice. Nothing's for free out there, so it's a question of playing the game the right way, but doing it harder and longer than the other team that has proven through 60 games in their schedule that they do it night in, night out."
The Bruins will be the first test on a daunting schedule for the Oilers over the next few weeks. Edmonton will play a home-and-away series with Boston, Toronto, and Winnipeg over their next seven game. By St. Patrick's Day, the Oilers will have a pretty strong indication of how they stack up against the game's elite while entering hockey's pre-playoff crunch time.
"I mean, (it's an exciting) time of the year too, right? These points are crucial. You look around the league and the standings, points are hard to come by," defenceman Darnell Nurse said. "For us these next two weeks, we're playing some really good teams. We're back to our focus of taking the one game at a time and Boston's here tonight -- a really good team that presents a lot of challenges. In this room, we have a lot of confidence in our group that we can play with anybody, and when we're on our game, we're a team to be reckoned with."

TIME TO PLAY THEIR GAME

The Oilers have demonstrated they can play with any team in the NHL this season when they play their style of game. Edmonton has defeated five of the NHL's top eight teams as of Monday afternoon, having only played six of them so far. The lone top eight team the Oilers have played and not beaten is the New Jersey Devils, who they carried a 3-1 lead into the third period back on Nov. 3.
When the Oilers are skating and playing connected as a five-man unit, the results tend to look a lot like the 7-2 romp in Pittsburgh. It's just a matter of can they consistently play within Coach Woodcroft's system and avoid let downs like Saturday's matinee in Columbus.
"I'd say the game we want to play, it's not just the game the coach wants to play, it's the game the team wants to play. I think we showed that when we have people adhering to a certain type of structure, a certain way of playing, and understanding that the other team does good things -- if we play the game that we're capable of playing, we can beat anybody," Woodcroft said. "I think that's a lesson that came out of that game, the road game in Pittsburgh. The other game against Columbus, I just didn't think we started the game on time and we needed to have a little bit of a shake-up in order to get everybody on their toes. We did some good things, but we didn't have enough for long enough."
"In Pittsburgh, we executed early and we built a lead first half of the game, and that's the way the game played out. It's funny, you start to think, oh yeah, it's pretty easy out there," Kulak said. "Then stuff like that happens when we come and we're starting to put the puck through the middle at the start of the game against Columbus, and they're working hard picking it off, turning it the other way and scoring on us. You realize quick how tight the game is. I think that's what the case of that was."

LINEUP NOTES

The Oilers lineup will likely not look much different than the one they rolled out on Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets, excluding tweaks in the lines.
Evander Kane, who has missed the four games due to injury, did not skate this morning and according to Coach Woodcroft will not dress against Boston.
"He's still day to day," the Oilers head coach said. "He's not at the point where we expect him to miss a huge chunk of time. He's not available for tonight's game, but he is healing, it's day-to-day."
The injury has come at an unfortunate time for both the Oilers and Kane, who were riding high prior to the injury. Kane had scored in four of the last seven games prior to leaving the lineup and the Oilers were in the middle of their long stretch of games in which they earned at least a point.
One individual whose status is a little more up in the air tonight is Klim Kostin. The fan favourite has been hampered by an illness and has not played since Feb. 15 in Detroit. Kostin has been skating with the team both on their last road trip and at Rogers Place in the last two practices. It appears to be a matter of time before the 23-year-old is back wreaking havoc on the forecheck, but there would be no tipping of the hand from Woodcroft after morning skate.
"He had a little pregame skate here. I haven't gone back and see where he's at, but he's progressively gotten better each day," Woodcroft said. "What have we missed? I think he's a huge man that gets in on the forecheck. When he plays in a simple and straightforward manner and he plays with emotion, he's hard to handle. He's also a very popular teammate. I know he's popular amongst our fan base, but he's a popular teammate as well. With him not being in there, that's an important piece not in the lineup."
Although not confirmed by the Oiler head coach, Stuart Skinner manned the starters net on Sunday and looks likely to be situated in the blue paint when puck drops tonight against the Bruins. Skinner is coming off a hard luck loss in Columbus where he came into the game during the second period in relief of Jack Campbell, but still sports a solid .912 save percentage for the Blue & Orange this season.
For the Bruins, former Oilers first-overall pick Taylor Hall will not be in the lineup tonight. The 31-year-old returned to Boston after suffering a lower-body injury. Hall played six seasons with the Oilers, notching 328 points (132G, 196A) in 381 games in Blue & Orange.
-- Michael Arcuri, EdmontonOilers.com

PREVIEW

OILERS vs. BRUINS
WATCH: 6:30 p.m. MT; televised on Sportsnet West
Oilers Team Scope
The Edmonton Oilers fought back to erase a four-goal deficit to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday afternoon, but Jack Roslovic's two goals in the final frame as part of a four-point day sunk the Oilers to a 6-5 defeat and their second regulation loss since Jan. 9.
Warren Foegele kicked off a four-goal stretch of 8:02 in the second period to pull the score back to 4-4 through 40 minutes, including Connor McDavid recording three of his four points on the afternoon and Leon Draisaitl scoring in his career-best seventh straight game. The comeback was cannoned in the third period by the Blue Jackets when Roslovic scored twice, negating a Zach Hyman goal inside the final three minutes with Edmonton's net empty for a 6-5 final.
"The first period wasn't our best, and then we obviously weren't sharp early on in the second, but we clawed back," Draisaitl said on Sunday. "Then when we did find our game, it was dominating, but obviously you'd like to go home with the two points."
The Oilers looked untouchable for that eight-minute stretch of the second period in Columbus and will need that type of effort for 60 minutes on Monday when they go toe-to-toe with the league-leading Boston Bruins to begin a challenging seven-game stretch -- all against Stanley Cup contenders.
"It's going to be a good test, it's going to be a good challenge for us," Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. "I think everybody in here is excited and if we're not, we should be to play a team like this and especially facing them twice now in the coming week. It's going be a good test and we're going to have to rise to the challenge and make sure that we play a full 60 and prepare for what we know -- it's going to be a hard game."
A brief-but-efficient Sunday morning practice at Rogers Place was an opportunity for the Oilers to regroup heading into the start of a gauntlet of difficult games where they'll face the Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets twice and the Buffalo Sabres over the next 13 days.
"We're in a stretch I think of eleven games in 20 days. This week is going to be four games in six days," Head Coach Jay Woodcroft, who'll coach his 99th game for the Oilers on Monday, said after practice. "We're not the only team in the NHL that's dealing with this, so you look anywhere in the NHL and teams are dealing with those types of schedules. We want to handle it the best and there's been a lot of thought into how to manage energy reservoirs."

Bruins Team Scope
When your goalie's scoring goals, things are obviously going pretty well.
Boston netminder Linus Ullmark scored an empty-net goal in addition to picking up his 30th win of the season in a 3-1 win over the Canucks on Saturday to help stretch the Bruins win streak to six games. Ullmark became the 16th NHL goalie and first Bruins' netminder to score a goal while becoming the second-fastest goalie in NHL history to 30 wins in a season by doing it in just 37 games.
Boston won their 45th game of the campaign, the most through a team's first 58 games of a season in NHL history, to improve to a remarkable 45-8-5 -- a 63-win pace would alost be the most ever in a season. Their goal differential is a sparking +95 that's 44 better overall than the second-place New Jersey Devils, owning the third-best goals for with 217 and a league-low 121 goals allowed.
David Pastrnak is McDavid's closest challenger in the Rocket Richard Trophy race with 46 goals and has 21-goal and 27-point leads on the next closest Bruins skaters. But Boston's strength offensively comes collectively from nine 10-goal scorers and 10 players who've reached 30 points already this season. Pair that with incredible goaltending and an intimidating blueline that's got better since the acquisition of Dmitri Orlov from the Washington Capitals with forward Garnet Hathaway, it's the prime makings of a surefire Stanley Cup candidate and runaway President's Trophy winner.
"it's a hard-nosed, nothing-easy-nothing-free, hard-working team and that's kind of how they've always been," Nugent-Hopkins added. "Then they have skilled players to make you pay if you start making mistakes, so we know that coming in tomorrow, we're going to have to play to our identity -- a fast game, keep it simple through the neutral zone. We can't let these guys turn the puck over, let them come back and have anything easy and anything free."

By The Numbers
Monday's game will mark Edmonton's first of two games against the Bruins this season... These teams will face each other again on Mar. 9 in Boston... The last time these teams met was on Dec. 9, 2022 in Edmonton, with the Bruins winning 3-2... The Oilers are the only team the Bruins have yet to play this season... Since entering the NHL in 1979-80, the Oilers worst record against any opponent has come against the Bruins (26-45-6-4)... The Bruins have won five straight road games, outscoring opponents 22-10... The Oilers are 11-3-6 in their last 20 games, outscoring opponents 88-67 while earning at least a point in 17 of the 20 games...
Pastrnak ranks second in the NHL with 42 goals, trailing only McDavid... Pastrnak's 42 goals are tied for the seventh-most through a player's first 58 games of a season in Bruins history, and the most since Cam Neely had 50 in 49 games in 1993-94... Hampus Lindholm scored a goal in his last game, giving him 39 points in 58 games (7G, 32A)... He is averaging a career-best 0.67 points/game and leads the NHL with a +38 rating...
McDavid has 14 points in 9 career games vs the Bruins (2G, 12A)... McDavid recorded his 10th game with four-plus points on Saturday -- a feat accomplished 22 times in a season by 11 different skaters in NHL history... McDavid has more games with four-plus points this season (10) than games with zero points (6)... Leon Draisaitl has a goal in seven straight games (7G, 3A), and a point in eight straight games (7G, 5A)... That is tied for the longest goal streak this season, and tied for the sixth-longest goal streak in a season in Oilers history...

Injury Report
OILERS - Oscar Klefbom (shoulder) is on IR; Mike Smith (undisclosed) is on IR;
Ryan Murray
(undisclosed) is on IR;
Klim Kostin
(illness) is day-to-day;
Evander Kane
(upper body) is day-to-day.
BRUINS - Vinni Lettieri (lower body) is on IR; Matt Filipe (undisclosed) is on IR.
-- Jamie Umbach, EdmontonOilers.com