McDavid’s hat trick powers Oilers over Canucks
EDMONTON — Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers’ big guns, embarrassed in their home opener a nigh earlier, feasted Thursday on the Vancouver Canucks.
McDavid scored a hat trick and added an assist as the Oilers beat the Canucks 5-2 for their first win of the NHL season.
Leon Draisaitl, the NHL’s top scorer last season, added four assists. Ryan NugentHopkins scored twice and added a helper, taking the sting out of a 5-3 loss to the Canucks Wednesday.
McDavid said all phases of the game were working, adding that high scores and defensive lapses may be a feature of the truncated 56-game season.
“The power play was good. The (penalty kill) was good,” said McDavid. “The hockey games have gone the way I kind of expected — a little bit more high scoring than they might be at this time of year if it was a normal year, and that’s across the league.”
Draisaitl said: “I thought it was a very solid game. Yesterday was not the way that we want to show up and we want to play. I thought it was a great response tonight.”
Mikko Koskinen, making his second start in two nights, turned back 38 shots for the win. Mike Smith was supposed to start, but was declared inactive, forcing Koskinen into back-to-back starts.
Nate Schmidt and Tyler Motte replied for Vancouver and Thatcher Demko stopped 41 shots in the loss.
Both teams now have one win and one loss in what will be an abbreviated regular season, with all seven Canadian teams playing each other exclusively in the North Division, often on back-to-back nights.
“I thought they came out a lot harder than we did to start the game, put us back on our toes early,” said Schmidt. “We’ve got to get used to this. This is going to happen.
“You play the same team on back to back nights in their own building, it’s going to happen. You know you’re going to get a better effort out of them after we come in and win game one of these mini-series we’re going to be having all year.”
Vancouver defenceman Quinn Hughes had an assist and now has three on the season.