TALBOT'S GAME MAY JUST BE COMING AROUND AFTER ALL
Goalie’s performance made the difference in shootout victory against the Blues
After easily stopping Brayden Schenn with the last attempt of the shootout, like he was inside the head of the St. Louis Blues centre and knew exactly where the puck was going, Cam Talbot skated off the ice with a win and a symphony of fist bumps from his teammates.
And absolutely no fist pumps from him.
Like he had been there before. Only he hasn’t been in the win column since before Halloween, which is not only scary but sobering for a guy who was the clearcut, every-night No. 1 Edmonton Oilers goalie until Mikko Koskinen came along to win eight of his first 12 starts after scratching a seven-year itch to return to the NHL from Europe.
The Oilers won 3-2 Wednesday because Oscar Klefbom keeps scoring late and often and they got the game to extra time, where Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Connor McDavid easily beat Jake Allen in the shootout.
But mainly this offensively challenged team won because of Talbot.
So maybe we can all exhale, at least for now.
He was the old Talbot again and if he gets his game back totally that will give the Oilers a nice No. 1 and No. 1A option in net for the first time in eons. That would be a relief for head coach Ken Hitchcock, who needs both because his team has lots of try, but makes pretty much every opposing goalie look like a combination of Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy shaking hands with Glenn Hall.
The Oilers need their goalies to win games, more so than McDavid, even if their captain did set up Klefbom’s tying goal for his 36th point of the season, which gives him a hand in nearly half of the Oilers’ 73 goals.
But this was Talbot’s night. It was about the saves, not the Oilers’ lack of scoring.
“Even though they buried a couple early, I thought my game was on point,” said Talbot, who got his team the two points with his first win after six straight losses.
When it was 2-0, he wouldn’t give the Blues, who had the second-fewest points in the league as of Wednesday, a third one.
Same when Nugent-Hopkins scored to make it 2-1 in the second.
Talbot robbed Joel Edmundson in overtime off a Ryan O’Reilly feed, he stopped O’Reilly pointblank earlier and Zach Sanford in the dying minutes of regulation.
“I was making saves from the
I was sharp, controlling my rebounds. I wasn’t giving them any second chances. Shots along the ice were going to the corners, shots to my body, I was eating them up.
slot,” Talbot said. “I just tried to battle. I made the big saves down the stretch.”
He hasn’t said that enough this season and he knows it.
The save on Sanford was huge. He had robbed him earlier and Sanford also scored one that was waved off for goalie interference. He was St. Louis’ most noticeable forward.
“I was rushing to the bench (for an extra attacker) and saw it was a 2-on-1,” he said.
It looked like Talbot got a piece of the shaft of his stick on it.
“Or maybe my blocker. Doesn’t matter,” said Talbot, adding Tuesday he not only wanted to win here, but get out of the game knowing he had played like the guy who had started 140 of the Oilers’ 164 games over the previous two seasons.
The fans may have fallen in love with Koskinen’s game, but they had a lusty relationship with Talbot for a long time.
“I was sharp, controlling my rebounds. I wasn’t giving them any second chances. Shots along the ice were going to the corners, shots to my body, I was eating them up. That’s when I’m at my best,” said Talbot.
The goal by the Blues’ Ivan Barbashev went under the bar and there wasn’t an Oilers player within 10 feet of him.
“If I push out, maybe he can go back door on me, so I had to play more conservatively and he made a nice shot,” said Talbot, who had no chance on Schenn’s goal, either, as he gobbled up a loose puck.
“Those boards are pretty lively here. I don’t know if I realized that at the morning skate. But I can live with that (goal). I just wanted to make the other big saves.”
Hitchcock was pumping Talbot’s tires before the game, feeling he had played well in Los Angeles in a loss 10 days ago, and even more so afterward.
“Cam has had a lot more activity than Koskinen in his last two games, but we’ve got two really good goalies who give us a chance to win every night and it’s on me to make sure there’s a rhythm moving forward. When you’ve got two goalies this good, you have to play them both,” said Hitchcock.
“You can’t win in the National Hockey League’s Western Conference with one goalie. Too much travel, it’s too demanding, there’s not enough space between games.
“We’re lucky.”
Talbot said he was tracking the puck well and Hitchcock also liked the goalie’s competitiveness.
“He’s a battler,” Hitchcock said. “I’ve only seen Cam play two games and I thought he was unbelievable early in Los Angeles (a 5-2 loss, which included two empty-netters.) And he was equally good against St. Louis.”