Defenceman Brett Kulak is on his way back to Los Angeles this afternoon after flying back home to Canmore yesterday to be there for the birth of his family’s second daughter, Skyler Brooklyn Kulak, and Head Coach Kris Knoblauch confirmed everyone’s doing well.
Kulak will be one of the Oilers blueliners tasked with making up for the absence of Mattias Ekholm, who’ll be out for at least the first round due to injury.
Coach Knoblauch is confident in all of his team’s defenders when it comes to being tasked with taking on bigger roles after seeing how they performed short-staffed late in the regular season.
Edmonton will be receiving Jake Walman back into their top-four defence after he missed the last five regular-season games with an injury, and Knoblauch added that John Klingberg will be out in addition to Evander Kane and Troy Stecher, who they hope will be available later in the series.
Either one of Josh Brown or Cam Dineen will fill the team’s sixth defence spot next to Ty Emberson on the third pairing.
“I think everyone can handle more minutes and play [bigger roles],” Knoblauch said of the blueline. “Certainly, you saw during the last couple of weeks where we were down to five defencemen where we had Bouchard, Kulak and Nurse regularly playing 30 minutes. Walman can play high minutes as well, but it will be very similar to this series that we’re going to rely on those guys to play a lot of big minutes.
“We’ll need contributions from all six of our guys, but we’re comfortable with having those guys step up and play a significant role.”
Goaltender Stuart Skinner will start in goal for the Oilers.
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