The Edmonton Oilers will be going for their fifth straight win tonight when they host the Nashville Predators.
It’s a sentence that not many predicted would be written a short time ago, when the Oilers were off to an 0-4-1 start and goalie Ben Scrivens was doing a pretty good impression of Devan Dubnyk, 2013-14 version.
But Scrivens has turned his game on a dime, registering a .940 save percentage during his team’s four-game winning streak. On Monday, he posted a 29-save shutout over Montreal.
The Oilers are also converting on more of their scoring chances...
Oilers have scored on 16.5% of their shots in past four games, all wins. Scored on 7.1% in first five, none of them wins.
— Jason Brough 🙁 (@SadClubCommish) October 29, 2014
The caveat in all this? All four teams the Oilers beat were from the Eastern Conference. Tonight, they’ll be facing a tough, rested Predators team that can’t be feeling too satisfied with itself after losing 3-0 at home to Pittsburgh on Saturday.
Nashville (5-1-2) comes into the contest boasting the NHL’s fourth-best defense, allowing just 1.88 goals per game.
“The Eastern style lends itself to the way our team is built, a little bit more than the West,” Oilers forward Taylor Hall conceded, per the Edmonton Journal, “but in saying that, the way our team is built this year, it is more capable of playing Western teams. It might not have shown in the first five games, but I definitely think that as the season goes on, you’ll see that.”