Oilers starting to find winning touch
With three victories in their last four games, could injury-plagued Edmonton be turning a corner?
EDMONTON — When you’ve suffered as many moral victories as the Edmonton Oilers have, feeling guilty after a real one just isn’t going to happen.
Yes, they were outshot worse than Tony Montana at the end of Scarface in Friday’s 2-1 win over the Dallas Stars, but after coming away empty-handed on too many nights when they felt they deserved better, they aren’t making any apologies for a night they deserved worse.
Call it the hockey gods levelling things out a little bit.
“Right now, in our position, we’re obviously very happy about it,” said Oilers centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “They’re a good team and they have a lot of offence and I don’t know if we handled it well enough, but you have to be positive.”
The Oilers were outshot 11-4 early on in the first period, were peppered 15-4 in the third and could have easily lost big if Anders Nilsson wasn’t spectacular.
But he was. And goalies are part of the team, too.
“We’ve relied on our goalies a lot this year,” said the Oilers’ Taylor Hall. “We’re not the strongest team defensively and we’re going to give up some chances, but he’s played amazing for us lately.”
That’s why, when asked if Edmonton deserved that win, Hall said yes. He subscribes to the same formula that every league since the dawn of sports has subscribed to: The team that deserves to win is the team that scored more than the other guys.
“It all evens out through the course of a season. The advanced stats nerds are going to say we don’t deserve two points and we shouldn’t even come to practice today. It’s the score at the end of the game.”
Having said all that, they know they have to shore things up in a big way Sunday against the streaking Buffalo Sabres (3-0-1 with 17 goals in their last four games) or the score at the end of the game might not be so pleasant.
Head coach Todd McLellan admits he was wrestling with mixed emotions in the wake of Friday’s result.
“You’re extremely excited about a win against a very good team and you’re happy for the guys,” he said. “A win is a win, we’ll take them any way we can get them right now, that’s really important.
“But then you’re disappointed in a couple of aspects of the game, which allows us some coaching moments. There’s areas we still have to improve on.”
Esthetics aside, the Oilers have now won two in a row and three of their last four, beating Pittsburgh, Boston and Dallas. Throw in a point after an overtime loss in Detroit and it’s the closest thing to a roll they’ve been on all season. To be doing it without Connor McDavid, Benoit Pouliot and Nail Yakupov has them feeling a lot better about themselves than they were after a shutout loss to Garret Sparks and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“We’re missing a whole line on offence and we’ve managed to get points in four of the last five. That’s not easy to do, we’ve played some quality teams,” said Hall.
“I’m really proud of our group. That was a really hard road trip and in the past we’ve come home from road trips and had a lull.”