Oller will push the defense of the golden knights in the 2nd round

In the 2024-25 season, the coaching room is a regular feature of former NHL coaches and assistants who transform their critical view of the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Paul Maclean, former coach of the Senators of Ottawa and assistant at the mighty ducks of Anaheim, Detroit Red Wings, Columbus Blue Jackets and Toronto Maple Leaf, looks at the second round of the Western Conference between the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers.

I look forward to seeing Vegas with the Oilers couple Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Every time we talk about Edmonton, we speak of how to win to win, and that did that in the first round.

If LA scored four goals, they would score five points if LA scored three points, they would score four points. They always found a way to score more goals than LA, and LA was one of the three best defensive teams in the course of the regular season.

Edmonton now has a certain depth. Getting back Evander Kane gives them more depth in their second line with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman. This third line with Trent Frederic and even the fourth line with Viktor Arvidsson and Mattias Janmark you can put the pressure on you.

Evan Bouchard at the rear end gives you a lot, especially in the power play. So can Vegas defend well enough to keep Edmonton away from the scoreboard? That is the biggest question I look at.

The Golden Knights have a pretty good defensive team, they play pretty well and I think their defense is pretty good. They are a little larger than maybe the Oilers defense, and they still have any insult through their defense with people like Shea Theodore, Alex Pietrangelo and Noah Hanifin, and even braying McNab.

I think to see the greatest thing for me is that Vegas can defend well enough so as not to let the Oilers surpass?

Edmonton also gets healthy.

If you are healthy and all of your boys have, you can find out what you really have. The playoffs are a great time to get together, play together and find it out, and you obviously did that after the first two games against LA

In the defender Mattias Ekholm, they still miss a huge piece. I think that Ekholm would really give her defense a much solid look than now. They have difficulty defending themselves and he is known as a defender, so that's a big piece for me.

At the end of the day you have to hurt at some point, as this will definitely go deeper into the second round, but Vegas has his own problem with striker Pavel Dorofeyev Out. He is a fairly important player for her, he really changes the second line with Brandon Saad instead of him. That is a big difference. This type achieves many goals for you.

Losing Vegas in the playoffs two years ago and playing them again is a great motivator for the boys who were there for the last time.

The Oilers trainer team was not there, but I am sure that they can find notes and talk to the players about how they did things and ask who was there and what could be done differently to play this team.

I think the team you played two years ago is similar in Vegas. They are a team that likes to play at a lot of speed, they are large in the back, they are in their defensive core, they protect the front of their network, this is a kind of bread and butter, and they have a lot of puck.

You play with the puck and don't play very well without the puck, but if you have it, you can be really effective.

I think Vegas is a really good team, and there you get your speed of how exactly you hand over the puck and you have not returned and get it back.

Her death is a large part of her game and puck ownership.

Special teams will be important. Most of the killing of penalties and the power game is discipline. Do not take punishments.

The playoffs are a time when they allow a few more freedoms, but they are still calling for punishments.

You don't want to give five or six options for the power game. Anyone who can be the discipline team will be a big factor and who can kill is a large part of it. If you can't kill you, it is better not to take them.

The penalty can cause such a difference in the series and really increase its goalkeeper to a different status. If your penalty plays well and the other team forces you to fight your power game, your team can give a lot of confidence.

I think the goalkeeper fight is even between Calvin Pickard and Adin Hill.

Good for Pickard. He is a guy who has existed for a while, is a great teammate, and he was in a backup role and had a chance and used and showed that he can play.

Can he keep it like that? This is a lot to ask that he continues to continue, and I am sure that you will need Stuart Skinner to play at some point because he brought her into the game 7 of the final last year. He still has to find his game and when the team finds his game, it is amazing how quickly a goalkeeper can find it.

Hill has a good size, is a big guy on the net and he has to fight with these two boys, McDavid and Draisaitl. They seem to score anyone, it doesn't matter who they put online. They always seem to be able to find their backs.

It is Play by Play and Gate to Gate, you have to have a really short memory and prepare for the next shot of what the Vegas goalkeepers have to do with the type of crime that the oilers will bring them.

Where I give Vegas a little around an edge, the size of her defense and the experience of her defense is. Defense I think where the difference is in the teams and where it is decided.