Edmonton Oilers have one defenseman who will be missing some time.
Edmonton Oilers have one defenseman who will be missing some time.
EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Oilers defense has had it's ups and downs.
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Outside of the Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard pairing - the Oilers defense have been treading water at best, and abysmal at worst. Brett Kulak and Vincent Desharnais have been a great third pairing, but the issues of Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci have been difficult for the coaching staff to patch up.
Plus minus isn't the greatest stat to hold as an analytical tool - but it presents a simple argument for the Oilers blue line.
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It's clear that a change needs to happen with the Oilers defense - and they have done that in recent games with the Kulak-Ceci and Nurse-Desharnais pairings.
However, any hopes to have Troy Stecher come in to replace Ceci are now done. Jason Gregor of Sports 1440 is reporting on Twitter this morning that Stecher will soon be having surgery on one of his ankles. There is no projected date or time known yet.
This would explain why Stecher hasn't been skating with the team - in addition to not playing. It's possible that he would have been an option to come in sooner, had this issue with his ankle not been a thing.
The Oilers may need to completely shuffle their blue line pairings - as well as inject fresh legs in order to come out of this series on top.
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