Looking to continue their climb to the top of the Pacific Division, the Edmonton Oilers aim for a fifth straight win on Thursday, hosting the Chicago Blackhawks.<\/p>\n
With seven games left and trailing by two points for the division lead, it is the best time for the Oilers to catch fire.<\/p>\n
The Blackhawks are on the other side of the coin, losing four in a row and will likely be the next team to be eliminated from playoff contention, sitting at the bottom of the Central Division.<\/p>\n
The NHL odds<\/a> have the Oilers as -235 favourites at home, with the OVER\/UNDER set at 6.5 goals. The puck drops at 9 p.m. ET from Rogers Place.<\/p>\n Blackhawks vs. Oilers NHL Betting Odds<\/p>\n Edmonton is looking to sweep the season series, after taking the first two meetings, 3-2 and 4-1. Connor McDavid seems to do what he wants versus the Hawks, picking up five points in the season series so far. The Oilers have beaten the Hawks in nine of the past 10 matchups, with Chicago\u2019s last victory coming in October of last season.<\/p>\n Despite their spotty record, the Blackhawks have kept themselves in the fight through most of their 75 games played this season. They have a great record ATS and have covered in five of their past 10 games. They have trouble producing consistent offence, scoring just 2.56 goals per game this season, which is the second-lowest in the league. They have been held to two or fewer in six of their past 10.<\/p>\n The offence has carried the load for the Oilers for most of the past few seasons, but when they focus a bit more on the defensive side of the puck, that is when they have the most success. On their current four-game win streak, they have done just that, holding opponents to 1.75 goals per game. They have covered the spread in each of those four games, while playing the OVER\/UNDER 2-2.<\/p>\n Chicago Blackhawks<\/p>\n The Blackhawks returned home after dropping their final three of a four-game road trip to take on the Winnipeg Jets Tuesday night. They got off to a good start with rookie Anton Frondell scoring the first of his career less than five minutes into the game to get Chicago ahead. The team was asleep at the wheel to start the second, allowing three straight goals just over halfway through the period. Tyler Bertuzzi (30th) cut the lead to 3-2 minutes later, and he potted another in the third to tie it at three. It took only 33 seconds for the Jets to win the game in overtime, getting the Hawks a point to keep them a bit out of 32nd in the league.<\/p>\n Bertuzzi set a new career high, scoring his 31st of the season and hit the 30-goal plateau for just the second time in his career. He has not scored 30 since the 2021-22 season when he was with the Red Wings.<\/p>\n Although Chicago is checking games off the schedule from here on out, they have injected prospects into the lineup who have something to prove. Frondell, along with Sacha Boisvert and Kevin Korchinski, were all high picks and are looking to stick around next season.<\/p>\n Edmonton Oilers<\/p>\n After back-to-back wins on the road, the Oilers returned to Rogers Place and put up two more wins over divisional opponents. They took down the Pacific-leading Ducks on Saturday, then shut out the Seattle Kraken 3-0 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Max Jones (third) and Kasperi Kapanen (eighth) scored in the first period, and captain Connor McDavid added an empty-netter to solidify the win for the Oilers. Connor Ingram stopped all 27 shots, taking home the first star of the game and solidifying his role as the Oilers\u2019 starting netminder.<\/p>\n McDavid\u2019s goal extended his goal-scoring streak to five games, a stretch where he has scored six and put up 10 points. He still leads the league with 125 points (43G, 82A), is third in goals and first in assists. He is the third-favourite for the Hart Trophy on the NHL futures board<\/a>, paying out +800.<\/p>\n Edmonton is now only two points back of first place in the division, a spot they have been chasing for about four weeks. Their final seven opponents are not the strongest, facing only three playoff teams. The Oilers the second-best odds to win the division at +180.<\/p>\n NHL Prediction: Who Will Win Blackhawks vs. Oilers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking to continue their climb to the top of the Pacific Division, the Edmonton Oilers aim for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5125],"tags":[198,146,5300,5,4,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-536731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-edmonton","9":"tag-edmonton-oilers","10":"tag-edmontonoilers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-oilers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116335777946582783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}