Personally I say start Skinner again tomorrow, but there's no reason you shouldn't start both at some point. It's unrealistic and frankly a bit ridiculous that teams expect their starter to start every game for 2 months straight in the playoffs. If a team did that in the regular season they would rightly be called out for putting too much on one guy. It's even worse in the playoffs as (depending on how the series end up), they could routinely be playing 7 games in 14 nights. The games are more strenuous and stressful as well. I think start Skinner but if Campbell can get hot down the stretch in the playoffs as he has been known to do, he could be the guy later on. Whichever one you start tomorrow, start the other Thursday.
Other than that,
We need more from Nuge, he had an unbelievable regular season but has looked lost so far. Desharnais needs to either sit out or have sheltered minutes. He had a couple times earlier in the season where he started to struggle, then after giving him a break he came back and played much better so maybe giving him a bit of a rest, either by sitting in the press box or playing under 10 minutes a night. Broberg has looked much stronger than him in the playoffs so far, so he should take those minutes.
I do like continuing 11-7, it always gives unique line combinations and makes it difficult for opponents to line match Connor and Leon. Danault has been shutting down Connor all series long 5v5 but I have faith he will find a way through it. I'm super glad that Hyman and Kane found the back of the net last night as they were two of the guys we needed to get going and hopefully they can carry that energy over into the next games. Our biggest asset is our potent offense and up until last night our #3,4 or 5 guys (Kane, Hyman, Nuge) were not doing a whole lot of anything so with two of those guys getting big goals I feel a lot more confident about our chances if they can carry that over.
The bottom-six has looked really strong imo, they haven't had the offensive success but have hemmed the Kings in their own zone more consistently than our top 2 lines. For me the standouts are McCleod, Ryan and Foegele who have played extremely well as a 3, I think its just a matter of time before one of these guys scores a couple big goals. Also Kulak looked amazing last night, skating really well and exiting our zone with control very successfully.
The reffing last night was actually pretty good and fair, but the 3 previous games especially Game 3 were horrible. The ratio of powerplays is still heavily favoring the Kings however, I believe that refs are not giving the Oilers many chances on the powerplay because we score pretty much every time we get out there, which should absolutely not matter but it seems like it does to them. The Kings are diving and embellishing a lot and I don't know if it's just not being caught by the officials or if they're intentionally not calling them, but if you get them on one or two embellishment calls it should make it a bit more manageable. That's not to pin everything on the refs though the Oilers have to be more disciplined, the Hyman penalty last night was very dumb and absolutely a penalty (though it was also embellished with an extra fall at the end for good measure).
In my opinion here's what the Oilers need to win the series:
1. Keep playing as they have as other than a few stretches, the Oilers have largely dominated offensive zone and possession time, as well as shots for pretty much the whole series so far
2. Stay out of the box, no stupid penalties
3. Goalies have to play decent but also don't need to be world beaters, they just need to not let in a ton of softies as our offense should be able to pick up the slack
4. Clear the front of our net better, the Kings have scored a big percentage of their goals off of rebounds so not giving up good secondary chances will be key
5. Get in Korpisalo's eyes more, he is reading the play very well so screening him, tipping pucks and getting to rebounds is going to be key for generating offense. Also generally hanging around the net a bit more, they have been consistently coming directly into our crease either during or after the play trying to get in our goalie's heads and we have not responded with the same
