None of the centers are going to matchup with McDavid, to much speed and IQ. Kopitar may still get clowned physically like he did on Goal 1 last night, but they all are, and at least with Kopitar (and Kempe) they are almost always going to make the right defensive read. Do you trust Byfield, Fiala and Laf to make the right reads? Knowing a wrong one has a good chance of ending up in the back of the net.
All these people coming up with ideas to slow him down, it's been tried by everyone and nobody in the league has any answers. I was to young to remember Gretzky's stone-prime, but the only person I can compare him to was when I was living in Pittsburgh in the mid 90's and saw Lemieux, people tried everything but they never had any answers, that is where we are with McDavid, and if something works for a short period of time, he adjusts as great players do. The way to beat those Pens teams is similar to this Oilers team, you just had to exploit the Pens on the other side of the ice, and I think the Oilers are very much like that, as we saw last night.
The first period of tomorrows game is going to be very telling, if the Kings come out like they did last night and attack the Oilers and generate chances on Skinner they should win the game and take-control of the series, if they try and come up with way #87657 to try and stop McDavid defensively and that results in taking the air out of the ball they are going to lose, because that team is going to get their goals.
This teams organizational philosophy has been defense-defense-defense, and the results vs. this team have been horrible, lets hope they don't try and go into the shell again tomorrow like they have so many times over the years vs this team (including the final 20 minutes last night).
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