Edmonton Oilers win big in loss to Colorado (2024)

The Edmonton Oilers closed out the regular season with a very important win Thursday night.

Nobody got hurt.

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No matter what the score was in Colorado, Priority One when the puck dropped was to get the last regular season game out of the way without any injuries and get ready for the playoffs.

Mission accomplished.

Now bring on the Kings. Edmonton opens its trilogy series with Los Angeles on Monday.

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Head coach Kris Knoblauch did his part to ensure none of his key guys got dinged up in the last game. He sat most of them out and dressed a 17-skater lineup that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the first game of the pre-season.

“Where do I start,” he said before the game. “Connor’s not playing. Leon’s not playing. Zach Hyman is not playing. Nugent-Hopkins is not playing. Ekholm and Bouchard are not playing. Evander is not playing, also.

“We could have spread it out a little more but we wanted to keep the top power play unit together.”

Together in the press box, that is. Nothing subtle about the coach’s message heading into this one.

“We’re heading into the playoffs and the game doesn’t mean very much,” said Knoblauch. “It would be really special to get 50 wins but there is a lot more at stake than just hitting 50 wins.

“We’re hitting the playoffs (at the end of a busy stretch). I don’t think anyone has played any more games recently than we have. We had a five (games) in eight (days), had a couple of days off and now we’re in a six in nine. That much hockey heading into the playoffs … this is an opportunity to get guys a little more rest.”

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The Avalanche, on the other hand, unleashed their full lineup. They lost four of their previous five games (and seven of their last 10) and are about to open the playoffs on the road against a Winnipeg team that dominated them this season.

Head coach Jared Bednar wanted his guys fired up and using the last game to make a statement, if that’s possible against an opponent whose leading scorer (Adam Henrique) has 51 points.

Nevertheless, Colorado went up 4-0 in the first 10 minutes and won 5-1.

The Oilers also finish the season with one win in their last five games, 1-3-1, although the last two were throwaways and the first two didn’t include Connor McDavid, so nobody is losing any sleep over the esthetics.

The only curious decision was starting goaltender Stuart Skinner in a game where the Oilers were going to be used as target practice. Skinner lasted one period (four goals on 13 shots) before Knoblauch gave him a mercy hook and threw Calvin Pickard to the wolves for the last 40 minutes.

Actually, the most important scoreboard wasn’t even in Colorado, but rather in Las Vegas, where the Golden Knights had to beat Anaheim to finish third in the Pacific and face the Oilers in a rematch of last year’s second-round series.

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Incredibly, Vegas lost on home ice to the third-worst team in the league, handing their fate over to the Kings, who needed a point against Chicago to finish third.

Incredibly, Los Angles blew a 3-1 lead and trailed 4-3 late against the second worst team in the league before scoring in the waning seconds to get the point they needed and set up another shot at the Oilers.

For the record, the Oilers finish the season 49-27-6, and 46-18-5 under Knoblauch, who arrived on the scene just as they were about to crash into the mountain.

Dylan Holloway scored the first Oilers goal to give him three goals and two assists in six games since being called up. … With seven regulars out of the lineup, the Oilers inserted Sam Gagner, Adam Erne, Troy Stecher and Philip Broberg.

E-mail:rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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