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I agree with Kurt’s take about placeholders. It may be a bit dicey to figure out where the three centres who are/were at the World Cup of Hockey might fit, it’s a lot simpler to figure out where the one absent blueliner fits. Has to be Sekera-Fayne.

I’ll grant you that pairings from the first day of camp are not particularly meaningful going forward, but in the here and now they establish a kind of pecking order, what Todd McLellan called a “starting point”. Which translates to very near last season’s starting point; when the season actually opened on October 8, the squad had eight defenders on the roster, with a ninth waiting in the wings for the first call-up when the inevitable injuries began to hit:

The pairings from that game in St. Louis are listed in order of combined ice time, while Ference and Davidson started the season in the press box. Ference didn’t last too long, playing just 6 games before landing on injured reserve; the other seven guys plus Nurse, the first call-up, each played 29+ games for the Oilers while no other player had more than 20.

Lo and behold, seven of those eight defenders are still here, with the one (massive) change occurring at 1RD where Justin Schultz departed at the trade deadline in one trade, then Adam Larsson was acquired four months later in another. Friday’s preliminary pairings saw Larsson as Klefbom’s new partner in Schultz’s old spot, while the Sekera-Fayne and Reinhart-Gryba duos remain intact from last year’s opening night. Nurse-Davidson is a new(-ish) pairing forged out of last year’s extras. Objectively they likely should be listed as the third pairing with Reinhart-Gryba the fourth; I’ve just lined them up as above to show the similarities in actual personnel from last year to this.