The Edmonton Oilers and their two-headed monster is in town tonight to take on the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre.

Tonight's visitors will be without top-four defenseman Darnell Nurse (Chris Knoblauch mentioned Nurse will likely be out for five to 10 days) after he received a textbook hit to the head from Toronto Maple Leafs' enforcer Ryan Reaves. Unlike the New York Rangers' Jacob Trouba, Reaves hasn't mastered the art of landing a legal but devastating hit and earned himself a five-game suspension.

While the suspension will serve to punish Reaves, it won't do anything to help the Edmonton Oilers defense. While some may say, "What do they need offence for? They have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.", the Alberta outfit has actually scored one goal less than the Montreal Canadiens this season. 

As talented as their two-headed monster is, their supporting cast is nowhere near as terrifying. Last year 54-goal scorer Zach Hyman has had a miserable start to the year, and only has eight points to his name in 18 games, including an underwhelming three goals. Meanwhile, riding shotgun on the second line with Draisaitl is 39-year-old veteran Corey Perry who has just four points. 

Still McDavid and Draisaitl come to town with active four-game point streaks, the former has 11 points in that span while the latter has eight. Unsurprisingly, they lead the team in points, the German is first with 24 having played all 18 games while the captain has 21 points in 15 duels. 

The main difference with the Montreal Canadiens is actually on defense. The Oilers have surrendered 57 goals so far this year while the Habs have given up the second most league wide with 70 lamplighters. 

The visitors cancelled their practice yesterday, preferring to get some rest after a 4-3 overtime defeat while the Canadiens practiced for a rare time on a Sunday. The main headline from practice was the absence of both Brendan Gallagher and David Savard who were both receiving treatment. The coach didn't meet the media though and has not confirmed who will be in the net.

While Gallagher played Saturday's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Savard missed the date with his former team because of an upper body injury. Jayden Struble will know doubt be interested to know if the veteran rearguard will be able to return to action, since he was supposed to be a healthy scratch on Saturday. Savard should be back in the lineup tonight but there has not been a confirmation of who would come out of the lineup for him.

Speaking of Saturday, after the 5-1 win over the Jackets, Arber Xhekaj was guest on the RDS post-game show l'Antichambre. On top of making the panel laugh when he told them he thought his fight with Mathieu Oliver had to be better than the Jake Paul - Mike Tyson disaster on Netflix, the rugged defenseman also mentioned something interesting about a new team dynamic.

According to Xhekaj, lately the players have spoken to each other and come to the conclusion they had to be better for each other, meaning they could call each other out when they felt a better performance was needed from a teammate. The timing of this chat is interesting since captain Nick Suzuki recently had dinner with Shea Weber and calling players out was actually one of the topic discussed.

In Saturday's game, Xhekaj looked more like himself than he has recently, and he was seen smiling widely on the bench. Having an happier version of the rugged defender would certainly help the Canadiens right the ship.

Samuel Montembeault has taken on the Oilers fives times so far in his career and has a 1-2-2 record, a 3.17 goals-against average and a .897 save percentage. Meanwhile Cayden Primeau has faced them one and has a 0-0-1, with a 3.73 GAA and a .833 SP. Given how low the backup's confidence seems to be right now, giving him the nod would be quite the gamble. It was confirmed at morning skat that Montembeault would once again be in net.

As for Edmonton, number one netminder Stuart Skinner has faced Montreal four times and has a 3-1-0 record, posting a 2.99 GAA and a .891 SP.  As for Calvin Pickard, he has played against the Habs six times and has a 2-4-0 record to show for it. His GAA stands at 2.76 and his SP at .907.  Pickard has now been confirmed as the Oilers' starter tonight. 

Up front, Suzuki has 14 points in 17 games while Caufield has five points in six meetings. Brendan Gallagher has got the most goals against the visitors with six lamplighters in 21 games. 

On the other side, McDavid has 32 points in 25 duels and Draisaitl has 33 points in 26 match-ups. As for Zach Hyman he has 24 points in just 25 tilts, meaning the Canadiens better keep a close eye on him. Fourth liner Jeff Skinner has always liked to play against the Habs, he has 47 points in 42 match-ups. 

Tonight's game is set for 7:30 PM and will be the first of two meetings between the two sides this season, with the only other tilt taking place in Edmonton in early March. In their last ten meetings, Edmonton has claimed seven wins including the last two games. 

For those of you who watch the games in French, you'll be glad to know Pierre Houde will be honored in a tribute attended by his colleagues from the media before the game in the Jacques-Beauchamp salon following his Foster Hewitt prize win. I'll be bringing you more details on this tomorrow. 

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