ABBOTSFORD, BC – Fresh off a day of bonding in beautiful British Columbia, the Oilers are looking to see if the added comeraderie converts into chemistry over the long run.
“I thought it was a really good day for us yesterday. We had the chance to spend some time together in a beautiful province, a beautiful part of the world,” Head Coach Jay Woodcroft said. “To get outdoors and enjoy the scenery was fantastic. The weather was great, the company, the food, and the experience will stay with them for a long time.”
The Oilers players spent Tuesday’s day off fishing and skeet shooting as team building exercises. The rigors of camp and the unfamiliarity of a new roster can be draining, but the emphasis on team building prior to a long stay at Rogers Place was of vital importance for Woodcroft.
“You’ve heard me say this before. I think the best form of team bonding is when you win together. For me, the way our schedule lined up this season with the first six regular season games are at home and nine for the first 12 are at home, we wanted the feel of having a road game early in the month of October,” Woodcroft said. “That’s why we made the decision we made.”
The first chance to test their new bonds will be later tonight against the Canucks team they beat 7-2 at Rogers Place on Monday. However, the expectation is that Vancouver will ice a very different lineup than the inexperienced group that went up against the Oilers top stars.
“It was a great day yesterday, but it’s a game day today and that’s where everybody’s head and mind is at,” Woodcrofat said. “We want to move the needle as we progress through training camp. We want to make sure we’re getting better and that we see that daily improvement that we want from day one.”
One area Woodcroft would like to see greater improvement is in the polish of the Oilers game. Preseason is the time to iron out the kinks that creep in during an offseason. It’s nearly impossible for players to mimic a game situation while training during the summer and it can take time to knock off the proverbial rust. However, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been parts of the Oilers game that Woodcroft has liked thus far.
“I’d like us to play a faster game. I think that’s normal as you work your way through training camp. We’ve seen a lot of good things so far, but I’d like us to play with a bit more pace and a bit more polish in certain parts of our game, but we’ve gotten really good efforts from every line so far,” Woodcroft said. “Now It’s about putting a professional polish on everything as we work through the last two preseason games.”
That polish can come from different aspects of the game. Whether it’s seeing how a play is developing ahead of time, or just having the game shape to get to the right spots. The Oilers only have two more exhibition games remaining before the results go from process oriented to result oriented, so tonight’s game will be an important indicator of how close the team is to be regular season ready.
“It comes down to the pace between your ears and understanding where the next play needs to be made and skating and supporting certain areas of the ice,” Woodcroft said. Sometimes it does come down to your feet, and sometimes it comes down to how fast you move the puck. All three of those areas we’re looking to take a step forward in today.”
Fresh off a sparkling performance in Winnipeg on Saturday, Stuart Skinner will get another chance to build off his strong preseason before heading into the regular season as Jack Campbell‘s backup.
The 23-year-old turned aside 33 of 35 shots against the Jets and was perfect in the shootout in the Oilers eventual 3-2 victory. The performance was just another in a long line a solid outings that have shown the local products growth since he was drafted in the third round back in 2017.
“I’ve seen a young man mature. I’ve seen a goaltender get better. I’ve seen a professional gain experience. I’ve seen him at every stage in his developmental process and he’s someone that I think is buoyed by the opportunity that is infront of him,” Woodcroft said about the netminders development curve. “He knows it’s an important year for him personally and an important year for us as a team collectively. I think he’s ready to make an impact.”
So far this preseason, Skinner is sporting an outstanding .942 save percentage, having turned aside 66 of 70 shots in parts of three exhibition game.
LINES FROM MORNING SKATE
The Oilers skated in Abbotsford this morning ahead of tonight’s 8:00 p.m. MT game against teh Canucks. It looks as if Dylan Holloway will get another shot in the top-six coming off a hat trick performance on Monday against the same team he’ll take on tonight. The rookie skated on a line with Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman on Monday, but tonight he’ll get an opportunity to line-up next to the Oilers other elite centre in Connor McDavid.
Jesse Puljujarvi draws back into the lineup after being rested from Saturday’s game in Winnipeg, while Tyson Barrie gets a break after a demanding preseason schedule in which the veteran has been asked to show several young Oilers defenders the ropes. Here is how the rest of the lines looked this morning, with tonight’s protential lineup likely to look very similar.
Holloway – McDavid – Hyman
Shore – Nugent-Hopkins – Puljujarvi
Janmark – McLeod – Ryan
Hamblin – Malone – Virtanen
Dylan Holloway highlighted Edmonton’s 7-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place on Monday night with a hat trick and an assist to extend his pre-season total to six points (four goals, two assists) in four games.
“I just wanted to play well. I wanted to play my game,” Holloway said. “I knew I would have to do something to make the team. I’m just happy with the way things are going, but I have more games coming up.”
Lost in the ‘Hollywood’ lights was a stellar 28-save performance from Jack Campbell and a goal and two assists for Zach Hyman, who played right wing on the second line with Holloway and Leon Draisaitl.
“I’m very, very happy with what we’ve seen from him,” Draisaitl said post-game of the kid who’s turning heads at Camp. “It’s just his hockey sense, which comes from his work ethic actually. It allows him to get into good situations and be up on the play. It gives himself an extra second to make a play, which is obviously big if you want to succeed offensively in this league. I’m very, very impressed so far.”
Warren Foegele found the back of the net twice in the final three minutes that saw the Oilers add three goals in quick succession, including Holloway’s hat-trick goal that started the late surge from Edmonton.
The Oilers travelled directly to Abbotsford, BC after Monday’s game to take part in team-building activities off the ice before Wednesday’s penultimate pre-season game.
Canucks Team Scope
Odds are that you can expect the Canucks to come back at the Oilers on Wednesday night with a tougher and more-formidable lineup at home.
It’s not the home of Rogers Arena, but the Canucks will look to rectify their five-goal defeat on MOnday at the home of their AHL affiliate, the Abbotsford Canucks, with the potential for the likes of Elias Petterson, captain Bo Horvat and Russian free-agent signing Andrei Kuzmenko to be in the lineup.
Vancouver is winless so far in pre-season through five games (0-4-1), including two-straight losses to the Seattle Kraken and split-squad defeats to the Calgary Flames before dropping Monday’s result to Edmonton. On Tuesday, the Canucks trimmed their roster by 13 the next day to a total of 29 players.
The Canucks have only two netminders in their expected tandem of Thatcher Demko and Spencer Martin left in camp, meaning the Oilers are expected to face stern competition between the pipes after putting seven past Collin Delia and Arturs Silovs on Monday.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
