PREVIEW: Oilers at Golden Knights

The Edmonton Oilers will travel to the Sin City to open up a four-game road trip on Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena against the Golden Knights.

You can watch the game on Sportsnet One at 8:00 pm MDT or listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 880 CHED.

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PREVIEW: Oilers at Golden Knights

LAS VEGAS, NV – The Oilers will start a four-game road trip on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Arena against the Golden Knights short a superstar and a few other other contributors from their lineup, but they just got a big piece back on Saturday who can help keep things rolling.

Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said after Sunday’s practice that the Oilers won’t have captain Connor McDavid, defencemen Mattias Ekholm and John Klingberg or goaltender Stuart Skinner to begin their trip with hopes that they can get back to full health and join the team later on in California.

McDavid has missed four games from a lower-body injury he sustained late in the second period of a 4-3 overtime defeat to the Winnipeg Jets back on Mar. 20 and the head coach says he expects him back in the Oilers lineup before the regular season ends after he saying earlier it'd be a "about a week" before he'd return.

“He might join us later on the trip, but not now,” Knoblauch said. “We know a ballpark point where it’s going to be and it’s not going to be the next game or two. We feel it should be before the regular season ends, so we’re looking at one, two (weeks), at the most three, because that’s what we have left in our season, but he’ll be [back] before the regular season is over.”

For now, there isn’t an urgency to rush their captain or any one of their currently-injured players back into the lineup as they enter the month of April with their 2024-25 regular-season schedule only nine games from completion. Edmonton is nine points behind Vegas and two behind Los Angeles for second place in the Pacific Division and home ice in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“I think the most important thing is that he is healthy and 100 percent for the playoffs,” Knoblauch said. “To say the regular season is not that important and we’re not playing for anything and putting in time is a little far-fetched. We’re not in that position.

“When he is healthy, we want him joining and want him playing, but we’re not going to push something that might get worse.”

The injury to Ekholm is one that Knoblauch feels the Swedish defenceman can recover from fully with the benefit of some extra rest, which the Oilers are more able to give right now despite their on-going battle for playoff positioning in the Pacific Division. Edmonton is nine points behind Vegas for the division lead and two behind Los Angeles for second place and home ice in the first round.

“I think it's something that can get healed and be 100 percent,” he said. “It's not like Evander Kane last year where it’s something that was ongoing and it didn't matter how much time off he had. It's not an injury like that. It is something that he can get healed and can move on from and be 100 percent, He Just needs some.”

Knoblauch added that Klingberg’s recovery from a lower-body-injury he suffered in early March was slowed by a setback, but that he’s an option along with Skinner to re-join the team later in the week – possibly for Saturday’s pivotal clash against LA.

If any of their returns are able to compare to Leon Draisaitl’s heroics from this past weekend’s Battle of Alberta, we’d consider that a major success.

Back in the lineup from a four-game injury absence, Draisaitl put in a heroic performance by scoring his 50th and 51st goals of the season to give the Oilers a 3-2 victory over the Flames and an important extra point in the playoff push. Defenceman Darnell Nurse had two assists, and goaltender Calvin Pickard was solid in his start with 26 saves as he operates as Edmonton's starting goaltender without Stuart Skinner.

The German tied the Flames 2-2 in the final four minutes with a far-side snap shot that beat goaltender Dustin Wolf before he added the OT winner 2:25 into the extra period, becoming just the 15th four-time 50-goal scorer in League history and the fourth to be born outside of North America while setting a new NHL record in the process with his sixth sudden-death winner of the season.

Draisaitl now needs two goals to reach 400 for his career and currently has nine more than the next closest player in the NHL's goal-scoring race in Toronto’s William Nylander (42). He owns 104 points (51 G, 53 A) in 69 games this season and 30 points (12 G, 18 A) over 25 gcareer ames against the Golden Knights, including in seven of their last 10 meetings with six being multi-point efforts.