OILERS 4, CAPITALS 3 (OT)
Draisaitl, Mcdavid team up on winner
EDMONTON 4, WASHINGTON 3 (OT)
Sometimes they really do mean it when they say it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.
That was certainly the case on Thursday for the Edmonton Oilers, who were looking to re-establish themselves after back-to-back shutout losses to a pair of mediocre opponents in Minnesota and Winnipeg.
With the high-powered Washington Capitals in town, the Oilers needed to show their nervous fans, and a skeptical hockey world, that their recent two-game blip was just a that, a blip, and not the early symptoms of another fatal collapse.
And they did, as Leon Draisaitl and Connor Mcdavid delivered some incredible third-period dramatics to turn a 3-1 deficit into a stunning 4-3 overtime victory.
Draisaitl made it 3-2 at 4:25, Mcdavid tied it at 18:22, and then Mcdavid set up Draisaitl for the overtime winner to bring down the house.
This one was all over the map, though.
The Oilers came out and hit the Capitals with some tough defence, scored first, led after 20 minutes and looked well on their way to making a statement.
Then they sagged, gave up three goals in the second period, and looked a lot like the team that lost to the Jets and Wild.
Then they took down a powerful Washington team to improve to 5-0 at home and 8-2-1 on the season.
“You try and stick to your game, you don’t want to change too much,” said Leon Draisaitl, adding the two road losses didn’t leave them rattled at all. “Sometimes you have to tweak little things, but we’re off to a good start. We want to maintain that confidence, but there are always things you can improve on.”
TIGHT SHIP
Being able to rely on their defence when their offence isn’t clicking is an element that will serve the Oilers well moving forward. So is not caving in when the other team kicks in a couple of quick ones. The Oilers showed again on Thursday that staying composed and keeping it close means they’re never really out of it.
“I don’t think this is team you want to get into a run and gun game with,” said winger Alex Chiasson, who sees a much more structured team this year than he did last. “We’re playing better as a five man unit. There isn’t as big a gap when we’re breaking out, between the defencemen to the forwards, so if there’s a miscue or a missed pass, there is more than one guy who can bail out the mistake.
“The forwards are doing a better job of coming back for the defencemen, which has helped us in breaking out the puck better, and first and foremost, our goaltending has been awesome. They’ve been great for us. I’ve always said, if you get good goaltending in this league, you have a chance to win every night.”
FINALLY
After roaring out of the gate with 22 goals in their first five games, it looked like the Oilers might never score again after their two-game Central Division stumble. They hadn’t seen a red light in 152:38 when the puck dropped for the Washington game, but they finally found some mesh on Darnell Nurse’s second goal of the season at 13:20 (ending the drought at 165:58). It was a fluke that banked in off Alex Ovechkin’s stick, but they were due for some puck luck.
A LITTLE HELP
In the end, the Oilers reaffirmed what we already knew: this is a team with a lot of fight and a lot of high-powered offence, but it’s also a team that’s going to die on the vine if it doesn’t get some secondary scoring.
The season is 11 games old and Mcdavid, Zack Kassian, James Neal and Draisaitl have 25 goals this year. The other nine forwards have two.
BANG BANG
The Caps used their quickstrike offence to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead on three shots early in the second period. Jakub Vrana tied it at 5:40 and Alex Ovechkin scored on a deflection at 6:27. Up to that point, the Oilers had been playing a strong defensive game against a power team from the east, but the object is still to score goals, and Washington’s outburst gave them more in 47 seconds than the Oilers had in 170 minutes.
DROUGHT IS OVER
Mcdavid came into the game on the longest pointless streak of his career — three games — and was 15:35 away from watching it stretch to four games before he set up Draisaitl for his seventh of the season to cut the Washington lead to 3-2.