We gotta stay healthy and Dubnyk needs to be consistent if we want to make playoffs. But I will say I'm more hopeful this year than in recent memory.

Got tickets for the following games:

Vs MIN Feb 21st
Vs DET Mar 15th
Vs VAN Mar 30th
Vs ANA Apr 21st

I think people will be laughing at the thought of "only" making the playoffs by the end of the season.

Didn't TSN pick you guys to miss...?

Edmonton won't make the playoffs. I think they'll take a step forward, but definitely no playoffs.

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14 Tm H2H Y! Dynasty
G, A, PIM, +/-, PPP, SOG, BLK
W, GAA, SV%, SHO
2C, 2LW, 2RW, 2F, 4D, 2G, 3Bn, 5IR

C: Giroux
LW: Parise, Hall
RW: Eberle
D: E.Karlsson
G: Lundqvist, Bobrovsky
IR:

Farm (17): Players < 164gp | Goalies < 82gp
Galchenyuk, Landeskog, Tarasenko, Kuznetsov, Silfverberg, Schultz, Vasilevsky

This season I'm not saying definite about anything. Remember the house of cards that was the Minnesota Wild at mid-season last year?

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In a 48-game season, I'm not saying anything with any kind of confidence. Kings weren't even in playoff contention last year 48 games in and they won the cup.

I like to eat waffles, but not talk that way. Oilers are making the playoffs for sure and the TSN bobbleheads will be talking about how we should have expected it at the start of the season.

On an unrelated note... from what I've heard, Petry has been bumped to the bottom pairing. Thoughts on this?

I thought the Smid - Petry pairing was one of the sole bright spots of last season. I'd rather see Whitney bring up the bottom pairing until he's shown he can return to form.

Here was last season's opening night lineup:

Taylor Hall - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Jordan Eberle
Ryan Smyth - Shawn Horcoff - Ryan Jones
Magnus Paajarvi - Eric Belanger - Linus Omark
Darcy Hordichuk - Anton Lander - Lennart Petrel
l
Ladislav Smid - Tom Gilbert
Andy Sutton - Corey Potter
Cam Barker - Theo Peckham

Devan Dubnyk
Nikolai Khabibulin

And now a potential lineup for this season:

Taylor Hall - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Jordan Eberle (a year older and developed chemistry in the AHL already)

Yakupov - Gagner - Hemsky (offensively a huge upgrade on last year's second line. Defensively weaker and will need to get the easy matchups - but could tear teams apart if they do)

Smyth - Horcoff - Hartikainen (Basically the same as last year's SECOND line, but with Harti in and Jones out. Pretty much a wash, but due to less minutes played hopefully Horcoff/Smyth can be much more effective for longer)

Eager - Belanger - Petrell (It's the fourth line ... meh)
Hordichuk

Petry - Smid (Is Petry on the same level as Gilbert? Probably not quite yet I would say. This "top" pairing is a step back slightly from the top pairing of last season)

Nick Schultz - Justin Schultz (Light years ahead of Sutton and Potter)

Whitney - Fistric (If Whitney is healthy this is disgustingly better tha last year's third pairing. If he is the same as last season then it is still better, but just not by the same vast gap of awesomeness)

Peckham
Potter

Dubnyk (Another year of development and a better defense in front of him - he's ready for the next step)
Danis


Looking at these two opening night rosters shows how much more reliable, both defensively and offensively, the Oiler blueline is, and how much more depth the forwards have.

This is going to be awesome. Full on homer mode engaged. NHL fanbases should be prepared to hate the Oilers starting this year (and for the right reasons, not because of Tambellini's smirk...)

I didn't know that. What are the projected blueline pairings supposed to be then? Petry can use some work on is defense still, but I thought he was just getting better and better as the season went on.