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Wednesday Night Hockey: Oilers go head-to-head with banged up Blues

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The Oilers head to St. Louis to take on the Blues, and they'll look to their young star center Connor McDavid to help bring Edmonton a win.

NBCSN’s coverage of the 2018-19 NHL season continues with Wednesday night’s matchup between the Edmonton Oilers and St. Louis Blues with coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET. You can watch the game online and on the NBC Sports app by clicking here.

The Oilers are coming off a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars on Monday night, but they played that game without superstar Connor McDavid (illness). It was the first time that McDavid missed time since he broke his collarbone during his rookie season. The good news for Edmonton, is that he was able to hit the ice for practice yesterday, so it appears as though he’ll be able to go against the Blues.

“We were either above the bar with a lot of guys or below the bar, nothing in between…really, you have to be able to win games if you’re missing one (premier) guy. It’s not the end of the world,” head coach Ken Hitchcock said after the loss to Dallas.

As you’d imagine, McDavid has been a huge part of the Oilers this season. Before missing Monday’s game, he had accumulated 14 goals and 35 points in just 26 games. Unfortunately for Edmonton, the lack of support for McDavid has translated into the team being outside of the playoff picture right now (they’re five points behind Minnesota for the last Wild Card spot).

On a positive note, they’ve been getting better results since Hitchcock took over behind the bench. With Hitchcock, the Oilers have gone 4-2-1. Sure, it’s a small sample, but they’ll take what they can get at this point.

Like the Oilers, the Blues also made a coaching change earlier this season, as they replaced Mike Yeo with Craig Berube. Not much has changed for St. Louis since Berube took over. With him, they’re 2-4-0, including an ugly 6-1 loss in Arizona on Saturday night.
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The fact that the injury bug has taken such a huge bite out of the Blues definitely won’t make things easier for them. St. Louis will be without Alex Pietrangelo (hand) and Robby Fabbri (shoulder) for the next little while. Both players will be re-evaluated around Christmas time. Alex Steen (concussion), Jaden Schwartz (upper body) and Carl Gunnarsson (upper body) are all day-to-day.

“It’s one of those things where you’ve got to realize that it’s time to step up for everybody,” defenseman Colton Parayko said. “It’s something that someone else has got to jump into different roles, maybe take on a different role and just bring something different each and every night and be prepared. Obviously at this point, we know where we’re at and we want to continue to get better and we want to climb the standings and that’s going to take a lot of commitment from everybody. Everyone’s got to play together and it’s not just going to happen in one game. It’s going to be a step up for everybody.”

The Blues need to go on a run if they want to salvage their season. They’re currently 11 points out of a playoff spot.

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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.