With the Oilers giving it away like motel matches, terms like “must win” and “playoff chances” are put away for another year and we can move on to buyouts, blame and the draft. Again.
at game 29, we looked at games 30-40 being very important. At that time, I compared them year over year:
- 11-12 after 29: 14-12-3, 31pts
- 12-13 after 29: 11-11-7, 29pts
The problem for last year’s team? Games 30-40:
- 11-12 games 31-40: 2-9-0, 4pts
- 12-13 games 31-40: ????
Here’s how they looked after game 30:
And since then, the club has gone 6-4-0, a huge improvement over one year ago but only good enough to move up the chart a little:
I think we can safely say they won’t catch Calgary and Colorado, and Florida plus Carolina have a head start in the lottery too; having said that, your Edmonton Oilers could be drafting top 5 this summer. That takes us from Curtis Lazar to Sean Monahan or Valeri Nichushkin.