PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Canucks<\/p>\n
EDMONTON, AB \u2013 Game 82 and plenty left to settle in the playoff picture.<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Oilers can secure home-ice advantage in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Thursday night with a victory over the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place in the final game of their regular season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s high importance,\u201d defenceman Darnell Nurse said. \u201cGoing into the playoffs, you’re looking forward to them, but this is a huge game for us, and we get to choose our own fate and our own outcome. We\u2019ve got to make this last one count.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Golden Knights clinched top spot in the Pacific with 95 points, the Oilers (91) are in need of a single point to finish second in the division and claim home ice to set up a potential Game 1 at Rogers Place later this week against either the Ducks (90) or the Kings (90) to begin the first round, depending on the results of their final games on Thursday.<\/p>\n
For the Oilers, anything other than a victory over the 32nd-ranked Canucks could result in them having to start the postseason on the road \u2013 either the third seed in the Pacific or the second Wild Card \u2013 so there\u2019s no shortage of ambition from the players & coaches to win for the chance to open in front of their fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said after Wednesday\u2019s practice. \u201cOur goal is to win and set us up better for the playoffs, whether we’re fortunate enough to get home-ice advantage or possibly win the Pacific.\u00a0 But our mindset is to win tomorrow to help us in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Canucks EDMONTON, AB \u2013 Game 82 and plenty left to settle in the playoff picture.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-553702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116413105296446459","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553702","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=553702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}