The Edmonton Oilers are winning when Connor McDavid goes scoreless, and winning when he dominates.
They’ll win with No. 1 Stuart Skinner in net, or they’ll take home two points with a heroic effort by backup Calvin Pickard, as they did in Minnesota Wednesday when Pickard made 31 saves — several spectacular — in a 5-3 Oilers win.
They’ll beat Los Angeles 1-0 in a low event, tight defensive pitchers’ duel. Or they’ll walk into St. Paul and defeat the Wild in high-event fashion, out-chanced 29-19 by the Wild, according to Natural Stat Trick.
And on a night when head coach Kris Knoblauch paired up McDavid and Leon Draisaitl earlier than usual, the newly-formed second line of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins between Vasily Podkolzin and Viktor Arvidsson produced the tying and winning goals in a 5-3 win.
“It was pretty wild game,” said Pickard, a backup with an 11-4 record on the season. “It was 3-3 there in the second period, and I just wanted to hold ‘em there. I knew we were going to score one or two more. I just wanted to keep it at three.”
It was actually 3-2 for Minnesota early in the second, another Oilers deficit after they’d crawled back from down 2-0 on two first period power-play goals by the Wild.
“It’s still a one-goal game,” Pickard said. “You’ve just got to keep hitting the ball back and keep the game close, because we have a great team that can score goals, and we did that tonight.
“It’s a blessing to play on such a good team, expecting to win every night,” he said. “It’s a really good environment for me to be in. Every day I wake up, I’m grateful.”
The Oilers pulled to within two points of Pacific Division-leading Vegas, the closest they’ve been all season long, and now the Presidents’ Trophy is not unrealistic. Edmonton hopped over Minnesota to sit fourth in the NHL’s overall standings, just four points out of top spot.
They’re 18-4-1 in their past 23 games.
How are they doing it?
“Good players, good staff,” Pickard said. “We play a game, we re-set, and we just go do it again. We’ve got to do it again (Thursday at Colorado). It’s a tough stretch of games for us, but we’re doing really well.”
This is Edmonton’s busiest stretch of the season, a four-game road trip followed by one game in Edmonton and three more on the road. It’s really like an eight-game trip, and so far the Oilers have won five out of six.
This was a complete team effort, with Pickard somehow stalling the Wild at three goals, while the Oilers put up the five goals they required to avoid a late-game fire drill in their own zone. Two separate leads weren’t enough for Minny, as McDavid scored twice, and Nugent-Hopkins, Podkolzin and Zach Hyman all had singles.
“That’s been our mindset for the last few years,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “Just stick with it and trust that we can get the job done — no matter what the score is.”
Nugent-Hopkins made a lovely feed to McDavid for a power-play snipe, then RNH got shifted back to centre on the second line. He deftly tipped home a Ty Emberson shot on the 3-3 goal, then watched as his linemates put together the game-winner on a centring pass by Podkolzin that deflected in off a Wild skate.
“It was just those two going to work, getting on the forecheck, holding on to the puck,” Nugent-Hopkins said of Arvidsson and Podkolzin, the two wingers who have flanked Draisaitl through the lion’s share of what has been a career season for No. 29. “There’s still lots of skill from those two, but I think the big thing was just hounding the puck, creating turnovers and being able to play with it.”
McChicken Wing?
Connor McDavid went unpenalized when he caught Wild winger Marcus Johansson with as sneaky an elbow as you’ll see, sending the 34-year-old first round pick back in 2009 to the ice looking for a call.
Might have been an accident, but as a wise man once said, there are very few accidents in a hockey game.
Although the injured player lying on the ice in the Wild zone made the call look obvious, you have to watch the play in slow-motion more than once to be sure that McDavid caught Johansson with the ol’ chicken wing.
He did just that, however, and you have to wonder if the Department of Player Safety won’t be issuing a fine — the same way they fined Los Angeles winger Adrian Kempe $5,000 for slew-footing McDavid Monday in Edmonton.
OIL SPILLS — McDavid (2-1-3 tonight) jumped ahead of Jari Kurri for the second most points in Oilers history with 1,044 (354 goals, 690 assists). Big picture, he has passed Daniel Sedin for the 81st in NHL history, and sits three points back of Henri Richard for 80th place … McDavid has an eight-game scoring streak against Minnesota (5-10-14), while Draisaitl also has an eight-gamer against the Wild (6-9-15) … While winger Jeff Skinner was a healthy scratch for the third straight game, centre Noah Philip played 8:42 at 4C (all at even-strength) after being called up from Bakersfield. He had a shot on goal and won four of his five draws.
