Since defeating the Islanders 4-1 in Knoblauch’s debut behind the bench back on Nov. 13, the Oilers are 10-5-0 to bring themselves back into contention for a Wild Card spot.
But two consecutive defeats are a good reminder that there’s still plenty of ground left to cover and defensive improvements that still need to be made.
“I think what’s non-negotiable is just taking shortcuts defensively to create more,” Knoblauch said. “Any good team plays good defence no matter what the score is and that’s the way we want to play.”
The Islanders may have lost these two teams’ last meeting, but they’ve earned at least a point in 14 of their 16 games since (9-2-5) – with 13 of them being of the one-goal variety – and return to home ice where they’re an impressive 12-1-2 at against the Oilers since 2000-01.
At Sunday’s skate, Coach Knoblauch shuffled the top-nine forwards around to shift some players and combinations in anticipation of having to deal with some line matching on this road trip from not having the last change.
“A little more balance, especially when we’re going on the road with other teams being able to match lines with us and we don’t have that last change, so they can get their five guys against our top unit as much as possible,” Knoblauch said.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was added to the second line with Leon Draisaitl and Warren Foegele, while Evander Kane was lifted to the top unit with Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman.
The line of Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid and Hyman was outscoring their opponents 13-5 with a 65.98 Corsi For Percentage (CF%) in 112:43 of ice time together this season, as per Natural Stat Trick, but building some balance through the lineup to combat line matching was enough for the coaching staff to change things up.
“We just want a little more balanced scoring. It’s tough breaking up that line,” he added. “They’ve been so good those three, but I think it’s best for our team for the long run.”