THE BIGGEST GAME - THE MOSTEST MUST WINNEST GAME OF THE SEASON

10:00 p.m. ET; SNP, CBC - HNIC Game. Hearing Damage Advisory!

The early season Canucks made mincemeat of the early season Oil. Winning all 3 meetings, outscoring the tOilers by the outrageous margin of 17-7. Surprised everyone. Not just how good the Nucks were, but how truly terrible the early season Oil were.

But Oil fired their coach and hired McD's old junior coach and the Oil went on the biggest new coach bump ever. Dammit.

Now the Oil are breathing their stinky, bumpy breath on the necks of our Nucks. This game will likely decide who hoists the pennant of the Pacific over their frozen water rink. You can tell that's a pretty big deal. Because it's not like you can buy a team pennant at the dollar store for $25.

Whatever.

The Nucks must win this game, not for just #1 status, prestige, or ticket price boost, but to send a message going into the playoffs. The message would be: dot dot something something dot. Which decoded says, we were the best of the division early and often and despite being a 500 team since the ASB, we're gonna clean your sock puppet's clock. Or dot dot something.

LINEUP - not lineup... because nhl.com ignores Canucks reasons nhl.com only ignores them all day.

Canucks projected lineup

Ilya Mikheyev -- Elias Pettersson -- Nils Hoglander

Pius Suter -- J.T. Miller -- Brock Boeser

Dakota Joshua -- Elias Lindholm -- Conor Garland

Vasily Podkolzin -- Teddy Blueger -- Sam Lafferty

Quinn Hughes -- Filip Hronek

Carson Soucy -- Tyler Myers

Nikita Zadorov -- Ian Cole

Casey DeSmith

Arturs Silovs

Scratched: Nils Aman, Phillip Di Guiseppe, Mark Friedman, Noah Juulsen

Injured: Thatcher Demko (knee)

Oilers projected lineup

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins -- Leon Draisaitl -- Zach Hyman

Evander Kane -- Adam Henrique -- Warren Foegele

Dylan Holloway -- Ryan McLeod -- Corey Perry

Mattias Janmark -- Derek Ryan -- Connor Brown

Mattias Ekholm -- Evan Bouchard

Darnell Nurse -- Troy Stecher

Brett Kulak -- Vincent Desharnais

Stuart Skinner

Calvin Pickard

Scratched: Cody Ceci

Injured: Sam Carrick (undisclosed), Connor McDavid (lower body)

Status report

Demko was a full participant in the Canucks morning skate Saturday, but the goalie will miss his 14th straight game. ... DeSmith will start after Silovs started the previous two games. ... Podkolzin, a healthy scratch for a 4-3 overtime loss to the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday, enters the lineup on the fourth line for Di Guiseppe, a forward. ... McDavid took part in the Oilers morning skate Saturday but the center will miss his third consecutive game. ... Skinner will alternate starts with Picard for the ninth consecutive game.

GAME NOTES

• Vancouver is 112-122-19-15 all-time against Edmonton, including a 50-69-7-8 record on the road.
• The Canucks are 4-3-3 in their last 10 games against the Oilers (4-1-0 in their last 5).
• Elias Lindholm leads all active Canucks skaters in scoring against Edmonton with 35 points (21-14-35) in 37 career games.
• J.T. Miller has 33 points (11-22-33) in 31 career games against the Oilers.
• In 30 games played against Edmonton, Brock Boeser has 27 points (16-11-27).
• Quinn Hughes has 22 points (3-19-22) in 24 career games against the Oilers.
• In 21 career games against Edmonton, Elias Pettersson has 19 points (6-13-19).
• In four career games (1-1-0), Casey DeSmith has a 3.24 GAA and a .921 save percentage versus the Oilers. 
• Arturs Silovs has yet to play a game against Edmonton.

DeSmith is the confirmed starter. Hopefully our goalie whisperer has whispered sweet stops and how to make them for the last week. McD is an unhealthy scratch, so that might be good news for us. What would be the other good news? Lindy gets a hattie. As does Miki. It's Dare To Dream Saturday at NM.

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMNAL

It's a different time of the year, where games have meaning for NucksNation. So let's try something very different. Some Jazzer/Grunger/Art Rock Fusion. Yoprepus with a nifty little Norwegian ditty called Protozoa.

GO CANUCKS GO!