I asked McLellan about Klefbom and game seven.

"I expect him to be available."

Big news for the #Oilers — Jason Gregor (@JasonGregor) May 8, 2017

The good news keeps pouring in. After hammering the Ducks in a dominant 7-1 victory Sunday night, Todd McLellan told reporters that Oscar Klefbom, who missed the game due to an undisclosed injury, is likely to be available for Game 7 on Wednesday.

It was announced early on Sunday that Andrej Sekera will miss the remainder of the series, but during warmups before Game 6, Klefbom determined he wasn’t good to go. Griffin Reinhart took his spot and played admirably alongside Eric Gryba, who filled in for Sekera.

Reinhart logged 13:23 and managed a 42.41 even strength Corsi For percentage, while Gryba played 13:28 and put up a 45.45 Corsi on top of multiple big hits in the defensive end. That’s a solid effort, and is more than anybody can expect from a team’s seventh and eighth defencemen who didn’t know they were going to be playing until hours before the game. Or, in Reinhart’s case, minutes.

While the blue line’s overall effort was phenomenal in Game 6, it’ll be a huge lift for the Oilers to get Klefbom back for Game 7. He’ll slot back in with Adam Larsson, who played with Darnell Nurse, while Kris Russell will likely play with Gryba and Nurse with his familiar partner Matt Benning.

That said, it was expected Klefbom was going to play today, too. We’ll see on Wednesday whether he’ll slot in or not.



