With this team I think it would be naive to assume that they will just beat the Blackhawks just because. Pretty much every other team in sport (not just hockey) of the Oilers purported stature would come out and paste the Blackhawks, but that's never how it happens with this team specifically. They need to totally crater to the point of utter embarrassment before they decide to show up with any reliability. When we chose to do this last year we were useless against the likes of the Sharks, Wild, and Flyers. It's not just going to magically get better.
I'm predicting something along the lines of winning a circus style 6-5 game against the Blackhawks that we would have lost to any other team, and then get pasted by the Flames as we feel happy with ourselves after the Blackhawks win. The Flames are hungry and work hard. Currently, the Oilers are a bunch of lazy, entitled assholes. The talent disparity doesn't matter at that point. Flames will have something to prove while we f*** around the ice thinking we should win just because.
Outside of Nurse I don't see it that way. McD, Drai, Nuge, Hyman, Ekholm, Bouch have carried this team and deserved a modicum of respect, and not stuff like the bolded.
Overall the 6 I mentioned are among the hardest working players in the world and carry this team every year. We have hardly anything this year outside of that group and particularly with Kane out all season.
I wouldn't doubt either that the Oilers are wanting players like Skinner to show up. Actually both of them, and do their part. Nurse seems to be a lost cause, on planet Space.
At some point it needs to be asked too ... seriously is Stuart Skinner actually any better than Calvin Pickard?
Or is he just a Pickard-tier goalie?
At least we're not paying him much.
I already asked. Jimmy got sent to his room over that side discussion.
Oh we're paying dearly to have Skinner as our starter. Not in actual pay or cap but in circumstance he costs an awful lot. Cost us first place, almost cost us the Vancouver series, the Dallas series and cost us the SC. The cost of this doofus in net is enormous and regular actually.