The Edmonton Oilers were able to add star forward Leon Draisaitl back to the lineup before Monday night’s Game 1 against the Anaheim Ducks. Unfortunately, they did not leave the matchup unscathed, with depth forward Adam Henrique sustaining an undisclosed injury late in the first period. The injury came on a collision with Oilers teammate Kasperi Kapanen. Henrique sat out of the final two periods and will now be unavailable for Game 2, head coach Kris Knoblauch told reporters including Chris Johnston of The Athletic.
Henrique was filling Edmonton’s fourth-line center role before going down with injury. He also served on the team’s top penalty-killing unit alongside Jason Dickinson. It could be Dickinson picking up the slack at even-strength in Henrique’s absence. The Trade Deadline acquisition fills the third-line center role and scored two goals – the opener and the tying goal – in Monday night’s win. Dickinson also took the third-most faceoffs of any Oilers center, behind Connor McDavid and Draisaitl. He won four of his 10 draws, or 40 percent – a dip from the 48.7 faceoff percentage he recorded in 17 regular season games with Edmonton.
While Dickinson prepares for a bit more trust in Game 2, it will be Josh Samanski stepping into the lineup to fill Henrique’s spot. Samanski made his NHL debut in late January. He went on to tally four points, six penalty minutes, and a plus-two in 24 games – while adding 31 points and 40 penalty minutes in 45 AHL games. Samanski stood out as a do-it-all, utility forward in his small NHL sample – but his lack of scoring could become glaring in must-win games. That is where Dickinson’s hot streak in the bottom-six could buoy the offense, while allowing Samanski to play the hard minutes while stars rest up.
Henrique has racked up 15 points, 18 penalty minutes, and a minus-12 through 65 games this season. On the tail-end of his career, the 1,000-game veteran has fallen into a depth role for the Oilers. He does still offer upside in faceoffs and on special teams, though. Henrique posted a 54.0 faceoff percentage and 104 minutes of penalty-killing time this season, both ranked third among the Oilers forwards. He will be a defense-oriented addition to the Oilers’ playoff lineup if he works back to full health before the end of the first round.
You could do a lot worse than giving Dickinson more playing time. He’s a winning player and valuable at a lot of things. Big part of the #1 PK for the Hawks all year and shut down a lot of scorers. Got a 1st round pick for him so can’t complain. Just sorry he ended up playing for Bowman.
@Unclemike1526 – I’m glad you posted here, as I have a tidbit that might interest you, even though it has nothing to do with this article. A couple of days ago, I went on the tunein.com site looking for a game replay, which I found. What I also discovered was replays were (still are as of this writing) available for download. That includes ‘Hawks games, going back to the start of the 2024-2025 season. Troy was still doing games with John, and if you’re interested you could download those. I was a big fan of him both as a player and analyst, so I took advantage of this myself. I can’t say if older games are available behind their paywall, and wouldn’t recommend it, as paying a subscription for stuff like this can be a dicey experience. These files range in size from about 192MB to 241MB. And, there might be a game or two that is totally screwed up and has nothing but Sirius/XM spam. I ran across that a lot going through several teams’ collections. I verified you can download these with CrapGoogle Chrome or Micro$haft’s browsers, but it’s more convoluted than if you use Firefox, LibreWolf, or Mullvad.
I’m a committed Firefox guy so I’m out but thanks anyway! In fact I have a video appt. with my Dr. next Tuesday and his site said we don’t recommend using this browser and I said Oh well then I guess we’ll have to go another route. Carrier Pigeon maybe? I’m not changing.
@Unclemike1526 – Does that mean you do use Firefox?
Yes I use Firefox. I only have Edge on here because it comes with Windows and as a B/U. Been using it for years and I’m not changing. LOL
@Unclemike1526 – I’m glad to hear that! I misunderstood, hence the follow-up. This means you can just hit “Ctrl+i” to bring up the “Page Info” box, select “Media”, then click on the “Type” column to bring the audio link to the top. Select it, click “Save As”, then wait for the download to complete. The quick PSA I have is to go through the Firefox settings, and castrate anything that enables “AI”, or what I refer to as “Crap-I slop”. Also, change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, for better privacy than the other choices. Firefox and its forks are much better for privacy, so good to know you’re part of the club!