RALEIGH N.C. — They stopped the morning skate when Vasily Podkolzin ripped a puck off of Calvin Pickard’s melon, bending a bar on his goalie mask. Pickard put on his backup head gear and soldiered on, but it turns out Podkolzin wasn’t the only one firing high and mighty.
“Who got ya in the mask?” someone asked Pickard in the dressing afterwards.
“Who didn’t?” he answered.
Ten hours later, Pickard had the wrestling belt as the game MVP draped over one shoulder, and a Hockey Night in Canada towel around his neck as the game’s first star with 35 saves in a 3-1 Oilers win at Carolina.
And, yes, he had to use his head again to snap a five-game Oilers losing streak here in Raleigh, where Edmonton hasn’t won in just over four years.
“I think I got a couple more (in the mask) tonight,” he said.
Did Edmonton need this win? Oh boy…
Pickard’s biggest save of the night came with 48 seconds left when, with Edmonton seemingly home and cooled on a late power play, Sebastian Aho inexplicably got behind everyone for a clear-cut breakaway with the score still 2-1.
Pickard made the game-saving pad stop, and after some shenanigans, Evan Bouchard hit the empty net at 19:59 of the third period for his first power-play goal of the season in game No. 60. It sealed a 3-1 win, the Oilers’ first ‘W’ since Feb. 5.
“I’ll remember that we got a power-play goal, which was nice,” chuckled head coach Kris Knoblauch. “But yeah, obviously, that’s not how we would like to draw that up.”
Gulp…
Hey, when you’ve lost five straight, that elusive slump-breaker always seems to go right down to the wire.
An Oilers team that has played poorly — and received goaltending that hasn’t been much better — needed the tonic that Pickard dispensed Saturday. He was clean and quiet in his crease, yet desperate when he had to be, beaten only on a back-door Aho tap-in on a late Hurricanes power play.
This wasn’t just any game for the backup to get a start in.
“It felt like a little bit more, for myself, coming off a tough one last weekend (a 7-3 loss at Washington), and then obviously our team situation right now too,” Pickard said. “We’re a great team. Obviously we’re in a big slump, and we’ve been playing some really good teams too that have been playing good hockey. But we needed to come in and have a full 60, a great game, and we did that.”
It should be noted too that Connor McDavid’s assist on Bouchard’s goal is career helper No. 700 — in game No. 699 — making him just the third player in NHL history to pile up 700 assists in less than 700 games. Of course, Wayne Gretzky was first (478 games), followed by Mario Lemieux (579 games).
It was a lean road trip for McDavid after the 4 Nations Face-Off, with four one-assist games and zero goals. But he hasn’t slept in his own bed since Feb. 8, so getting home and recharging on a day off Sunday should help the Oilers captain, whose overall game improved in these past two games, just like his team.
Edmonton was pretty good in Florida, but lost 4-3. They were that much better in Raleigh, walking out with two points.
“It could have gone either way in Florida. It just didn’t go our way,” Pickard said. “Coming into this building, it’s a really hard place to win. They’re a really good team too — they pressure everywhere. But I thought we deserved to win.”
Give Edmonton’s third line of Adam Henrique between Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown some love as well. They were much, much better after going minus-3 against Florida.
Henrique opened the scoring when a centring pass bounced in off his body, the kind of break this team hasn’t had in a while.
“You’ve got to keep going to those positions, and that’s when you tend to find those things. It’s playing simple and direct. That’s the reason for that one,” Henrique said. “Everybody came to play, everybody did a lot of the little things right tonight, and it paid off.”
Whether or not GM Stan Bowman dips into the goalie market before Friday’s trade deadline remains to be seen. But dragging Pickard out of this dressing room would not be inconsequential.
“Everybody in our room loves him. We love playing in front of him,” said Leon Draisaitl, by far Edmonton’s best player on this 1-4 road trip.
What was the difference in Raleigh?
“Our work ethic. Our hunt towards the puck. Our details in terms of stopping on pucks and making hard plays,” Draisaitl said. “It’s a man’s game every time you come in here, and if you’re not ready for it they’ll run you out of the building.
“We were ready for it.”
