Despite Jarry’s solid showing with 34 saves in Sunday’s 4-3 overtime defeat in Game 4, Ingram has been Edmonton’s No. 1 netminder down the stretch in the regular season and will have the opportunity to return between the pipes and keep their season going as tonight’s starter, Knoblauch confirmed.
“Nothing against Jarry,” he said. “I thought he had a solid game the other night, but this last few weeks or months, Ingram’s been our starter and he’s been our guy. Now that our season’s on the line, we felt that we would go with our guy.”
There could be some rotation on the blueline for Edmonton based on this morning’s skate, where Darnell Nurse was alongside Evan Bouchard, Jake Walman was paired with Connor Murphy, and Ty Emberson was joined by Mattias Ekholm – though it remains to be seen how those pairings will unfold.
Coach Knoblauch said the changes were meant to get them comfortable playing with different partners as the Oilers look to get more of their defencemen involved on the penalty kill, which is 6-for-12 (50.0 percent) through the first five games of the series.
“I think there’ll be a lot of mix and matching with the defence, especially with some penalty kill rotation and stuff like that,” Knoblauch said. “So I think it was just more of getting guys used to playing with a different partner. Morning skate isn’t very much for us. We’re not getting much out of that anyway. I don’t think there’s chemistry being built on that, but I think tonight, there might be maybe a little more mixing.”
Final defence pairings and forward lines for the Oilers will be confirmed during warmups.