OILERS’ NET WORTH ON RISE THANKS TO TALBOT’S FINE PLAY
Goaltender helps Edmonton secure victory against Boston in first game on home ice
The way the Edmonton Oilers have started this season, you could make the case that they deserve to be the same 1-4 team they were at this time last year. They’re not.
Thanks in part to the hockey gods and their top-end talent rising to the occasion when the occasion demanded it, the Oilers head to their sixth game of the season Saturday night with a 3-2 record.
The scoresheet will read that Leon Draisaitl scored the game-winner in the team’s home opener at 37 seconds of overtime, giving the Oilers a 3-2 win over the Boston Bruins. It will also indicate Kailer Yamamoto and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored big goals to provide the win.
But while he wasn’t awarded one of the three stars, it says here your goalie has to win you a few games during the season and Cam Talbot won that one.
Stopping 27 of 29 shots, many of them with sensational saves, Talbot held the Oilers in there early when they once again didn’t show up intent to win all those little battles and races to the puck.
Talbot made up for the energy lost when the Oilers didn’t play their part out of the gate.
The theory was that the last team to hold a home opener in the NHL this season would emerge into a building so charged by energy you’d see sparks flying off their skates.
The concept was that, fuelled by their comeback in Winnipeg again the team with the longest home winning streak combined with the end of the Edmonton Oilers’ 20,029-kilometre world tour road trip, the team would come home to a spectacular scene.
There was a miniature Walterdale Bridge constructed for the team to emerge from and be introduced prior to the start of the home opener of their 40th season in the league.
And it was kind of cool as season tickets for all 40 years of the franchise in the NHL circled the Oilers logo at centre ice to be joined by members of today’s team as they were introduced. Then they dropped the puck. In no time at all, the shots on goal were 8-1 for the same Bruins team that welcomed the Oilers back to North America with a 4-1 spanking after Edmonton lost its opener 5-2 to New Jersey in Sweden.
That sort of sucked the energy out of Rogers Place Thursday. Then, finally, it began to build. With Edmonton fans praying for somebody other than Connor McDavid to take a turn at leading the way, somebody else did.
It was Talbot who stopped the first 15 shots of the game against the team with arguably the top line in the league — Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchant.
David Krejci finally broke the seal on a 0-0 game that should have been about 3-0 halfway through the second period. But then Yamamoto scored his first NHL goal, and a gorgeous one at that, to tie it back up.
Suddenly there was energy in Rogers Place.
And there were plenty of players deserving of praise, from the goaltender, to the three goal scorers, to Connor McDavid playing a supporting role.
OK. So a supporting role for McDavid is setting up the last two goals.
No. 97 now has 13 points in his first five games.
McDavid had 11 points after his first 10 games before playing through two separate extended spells of illness en route to a 108-point Art Ross Trophy run last season.
The year before, he had 12 points in his first 10 games on his way to a 100-point season and his first NHL scoring title.
It’s like the schedule-maker really had it against the Oilers this year with the monster road trip to open the season against New Jersey, Boston, New York and Winnipeg, followed by four 100-point teams from last year — Boston, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Washington — visiting for the team’s first home stand of the season.
Either that, or the schedule-maker just couldn’t wait to put the Hart Trophy-snubbed McDavid against the top teams and the league’s biggest stars against the Oilers captain who is being celebrated as the greatest player in the game by somebody of significance (Sidney Crosby being the latest) almost daily now.
Crosby is here with the Penguins, who won back-to-back Stanley Cups not so long ago. After Crosby leaves, Alex Ovechkin and the current Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals will be skating through Rogers Place.
Fans who have sold out the last 507 games in Edmonton were not anticipating this stretch of premium attractions with enthusiasm so much as they were with dread.
But with a third straight win, and a winning record, this team has a solid base in which to attack the rest of this home stand.
Maybe Saturday they’ll show up for the start of the game. It’s not until 8 p.m.