Tonight, the Western Conference-leading Utah Mammoth will visit the Edmonton Oilers, the Western Conference representatives in the Stanley Cup Finals the last two years. Utah is looking to make it 8 straight victories and finish off a perfect 4-game road trip before heading home to host the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday.
The Oilers are returning home from a brief 2-game back-to-back road trip, and only picked up one point in an overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday by a score of 4-3. On Saturday, the Edmonton Oilers were defeated by the Seattle Kraken by a score of 3-2.
Following a consecutive season defeated by the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Finals, the team is easing into the 2025-26 NHL campaign slowly, playing a large amount of hockey over the last two years.
The host is just 3 points behind the Pacific Division-leading Las Vegas Golden Knights after 10 games played. Edmonton will host three games this week, looking to regain the lead in the Pacific Division.
To no one's surprise, the Oilers' leading point getter is Connor McDavid with 12 points. The only surprise is that McDavid has just one goal this season. Leon Draisaitl has picked up the slack in that department, leading the team with 7 goals. Longtime Oiler, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, has had a nice start to the season with 5 goals and 11 points. New addition, Andrew Mangiapane, has three goals but is providing the most scoring depth at the forward position.
The defensive production has been Darnell Nurse with just one goal and five points. Surprisingly, star defender Evan Bouchard has just one goal and 4 points. It is crazy to think that just two goals have been scored by Bouchard and McDavid.
Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard have almost split the workload between the pipes. Skinner has the edge with 6 games played to Pickard's 4. Both players have 2 victories, but Skinner has the better statistics with a 2.31 GAA and a .903 save percentage. It will be interesting to see if former Utah goalie Connor Ingram gets called up to Edmonton after being acquired from the Mammoth before the start of this season. He recently debuted with the Edmonton AHL affiliate, Bakersfield Condors.
The main focus for the Mammoth tonight will be to shut down the Edmonton forwards, McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, and Draisaitl and the chances of winning improve greatly towards 8 straight victories.,