Leon Draisaitl<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cHe was unreal tonight. It\u2019s a give and take. When you give up breakaways and odd-man rushes, your goalie is only going to stop so many of those.<\/p>\n\u201cCertainly, that\u2019s how we want to play — that\u2019s our identity. Obviously, the (previous) game got away from us a little bit, it\u2019s not the easiest situation either, but you can certainly play that better, and tonight was a solid effort. It\u2019s certainly the blueprint of how we want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting timely saves is part of the game plan for Edmonton, which hired Mike Babcock as coach with the hope he could help bring more structure.<\/p>\n
Babcock walked into the postgame media availability Saturday and said, \u201cDidn\u2019t give up a touchdown,\u201d while pumping his fist.<\/p>\n
All jokes aside, he was happy with the play of his still-young goalie.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe seems like a confident kid,\u201d Babcock said of Levi. \u201cI think your first game with a new organization, sometimes things don\u2019t go as well, and you don\u2019t get your own way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Freddy Andersen did a heck of job with him the other day, he was talking to him about tightness, and Freddy\u2019s been through it, lived it. Freddy is 37 and won the Stanley Cup and to have a guy like that in your organization, that can share his experience with a young guy, I think it helps him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andersen is working his way back from a knee injury and isn\u2019t expected to make his Oilers debut until at least December. These next few months are Levi\u2019s chance to prove he can contribute to a team that is still trying to prove it can contend for the Stanley Cup after back-to-back trips to the Cup Final in 2024 and 2025. The Oilers were eliminated by the Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference First Round last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever the circumstance is, I\u2019ll be ready to play,\u201d Levi said. \u201cFreddy has been awesome so far; he\u2019s been around and I\u2019ve had great conversations with him, a lot of support from him too. I\u2019ve never really had a veteran goalie on my team in the goalie system and the goalie team with me. Having his support, he\u2019s been through so much and hearing what he has to say, and his leadership also has been super helpful too. I\u2019m sure happy he\u2019s around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmonton (2-0-1) is off until Wednesday, when it begins a three-game California trip in Anaheim. Who gets that start in goal for the Oilers hasn\u2019t been revealed yet, but Levi hits the road with something to build on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But he\u2019s not getting ahead of himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter today, nothing changes,\u201d Levi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering Saturday, the Oilers\u2019 defensive game was also an issue, giving up high-quality scoring chances in the season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-920819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}