The Edmonton Oilers have one of the league’s top players

in reigning two-time scoring champion Connor McDavid. But heading into their home opener Adidas Noah Hanifin Jersey , the spotlight may be on the club’s defensive unit as they are tasked with shutting down one of the NHL’s top lines.Edmonton finally plays at Rogers Place on Thursday night when they face the Boston Bruins, who are led by the red-hot trio of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak.The excitement of playing at home for the first time comes after Edmonton (2-2-0) rallied from a three-goal, third-period deficit to top the Winnipeg Jets 5-4 on Tuesday night. That ended the Jets’ 11-game regular-season home winning streak.Article continues below ...After salvaging a split of a four-game season-opening road trip that started in Sweden, Oilers coach Todd McLellan wants to see his club play hard from the initial faceoff to the final horn.“They poured it all out, in my opinion, in the last period and a half. We didn’t pour it all out in the first period and a half, and our team cannot afford to waste minutes. It has to be on the line from minute one to minute 60,” he said Wednesday. Tuesday’s win also started a stretch in which Edmonton will play six straight games against teams that collected at least 100 points apiece in 2017-18. After facing the Bruins, the Oilers take on the Nashville Predators, Pittsburgh Penguins and defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals at Rogers Place before travelling to Nashville.“This homestand’s obviously really important and we’re playing some A-class teams,” McLellan noted.Last season, Edmonton was 19-18-4 at home but closed the campaign with three straight losses there.McDavid had two goals and two assists against the Jets and set an NHL record by having a hand in Edmonton’s first nine goals this season. Three of the captain’s four goals have come on the power play. He had five such tallies in 2017-18.“Pucks are going in for him and he’s very confident. He’s Connor,” McLellan said of McDavid, who has 17 goals and 18 assists in his last 16 home games, and a goal with seven assists in five career games versus Boston.Edmonton and Boston (4-2-0) close the season series with this matchup. McDavid scored early Adidas Alan Quine Jersey , but Cam Talbot yielded three goals in less than six minutes of the opening period en route to a 4-1 loss to Boston on Oct. 11. “That’s a good team over there,” Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse said on Wednesday. “They play hard. They’re very skilled. You can’t give them too much.”Marchand, Bergeron and Pastrnak have spearheaded the Bruins’ offense so far, combining for 15 of the club’s 24 goals. They accounted for two goals and two assists on Wednesday, but Boston’s four-game winning streak was snapped with a 5-2 loss to the Calgary Flames.All three players are riding five-game point streaks. Marchand has two goals and nine assists in that span, while Pastrnak — who had a goal against Calgary waved off after video review — has seven goals with three helpers.With five consecutive multipoint games, Bergeron has been the best of the bunch with six goals and seven assists. He is also the current NHL First Star of the Week.In 17 career games in Edmonton, Marchand, Bergeron and Pastrnak have totaled five goals and seven assists.Boston coach Bruce Cassidy is concerned about the lack of production from the remainder of the team.“We know we have a line that’s going to deliver that every night. We went home and we did get some of that much better balance. You hope that continues. It didn’t tonight,” Cassidy told the Boston Herald.Tuukka Rask stopped 23 Flames shots, but is 0-3-2 with a 3.79 goals-against average and .881 save percentage in his last five starts versus Edmonton.“We left our goalie out to dry, and it could have been worse,” Bergeron told the Boston Globe.It doesn’t appear Rask will get the chance to earn a win Thursday. In a tweet from the team earlier in the week, Cassidy said Jaroslav Halak would start against Edmonton. Halak has turned away 73 of 76 shots, including a 25-save effort versus the Oilers one week ago, while winning both of his starts for Boston.He’s given up a total of seven goals while losing each of his last two road starts against Edmonton. GLENDALE Adidas Dougie Hamilton Jersey , Ariz. — The Tampa Bay Lightning are well aware of the dangers of waiting until January or February to start making a playoff push.Perhaps that’s why they often take care of business, and in an emphatic way, well before that.The Arizona Coyotes, whose inability to reach the playoffs is in direct contrast to the Lightning’s frequent playoff success, know all too well how a season can get away from a team in October.Article continues below ...The Lightning, off to their usual strong start, will take a seven-game points streak into Gila River Arena to play the Coyotes on Saturday night. It’s the second half of a back-to-back for the Lightning, who won their third in a row by defeating the Vegas Golden Knights 3-2 at T-Mobile Arena on Friday.Tyler Johnson, Brayden Point and J.T. Miller scored for the Lightning, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 29 saves.“Our goaltender was there when we needed him and recorded a big win in a tough spot on the road,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “He was in the zone again and was tracking pucks, and our guys were good with letting him see pucks. You can get the shots, but if he can see them, he’ll usually stop them.”Victor Hedman, the Lightning’s star defenseman, sustained an undisclosed injury midway through the first period and didn’t return. He is not expected to play Saturday Adidas Julien Gauthier Jersey , but Cooper doesn’t think his injury will be long term.The Lightning are 7-1-1 overall and 6-0-1 in their last seven games. Nothing new there for a team that opened up 9-1-1 and 16-3-2 last season and was 5-1 to start the 2016-17 season. They’ve used good beginnings to help them reach the Eastern Conference finals two of the last three seasons.The Coyotes, however, aren’t the team they were at the start of the last two NHL seasons — and that’s encouraging to coach Rick Tocchet and his players.Arizona opened up 1-10-1 last season and never recovered. The season before that, the Coyotes lost five of their first six. This season, the Coyotes (4-5-0) have won two in a row — the first time in three Octobers they’ve done that — and three of four. Much of the reason for the Coyotes’ improvement is their goaltending, with both starter Antti Raanta (2-4, 2.32 goals-against average) and backup Darcy Kuemper (2-1, 1.34) playing well to date.“We’ve gotten excellent goaltending, right from the start of the year, and it’s really helped us,” Tocchet said Friday. “We’re still giving up some Grade-A chances, and we’ll try to eliminate that, but the goalies have been really good. They’re giving us a chance to win every night.”Raanta sat out the last two games with flu-like symptoms, and Kuemper stepped in to make 62 saves on 64 shots as the Coyotes beat the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday and the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday, both by 4-1 scores.The Coyotes’ season quickly came apart last season when Raanta missed much of the first half of the season with three different injuries and Tocchet and general manager John Chayka couldn’t find a suitable backup. They tried Louis Domingue, Scott Wedgewood and Adin Hill without success Adidas Petr Mrazek Jersey , with Dominque going 0-6 with a 4.33 goals-against average and an .856 save percentage.But once Raanta was healthy during the second half of the season, his 2.24 goals-against average and .930 save percentage were the best in the NHL for goaltenders who played as much as he did. And Chayka not only picked up the reliable Kuemper in a late-season trade with the Los Angeles Kings, he signed Raanta and Kuemper to multi-year contracts.Coincidentally, Domingue landed with the Lightning despite his horrid statistics with Arizona, and he’ll start Saturday night against his former team.The Coyotes also appear to have solved their early-season scoring issues. They were shut out in three of their first four games, including their first two home games, but they’ve scored 15 goals in the past four games.“We didn’t score in the first few games, but we knew if we stuck with it the goals would come in bunches, and that’s kind of happened,” forward Brendan Perlini said.The Lightning and Coyotes split their two-game season series in 2017-18, with each team winning in the other’s building.