PHILADELPHIA — Luck: “Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.”
“We got a little bit lucky,” admitted two-assist man Matt Savoie, after perhaps his best NHL game with assists on both Oilers goals in a 2-1 OT win.
Fortunate, blessed, favoured, born under a lucky star… All are accurate descriptors for an Edmonton Oilers team that collected back-to-back wins this week, first on a shorthanded, own-goal by the hapless Columbus Blue Jackets with 58 seconds to play, and then when an offside challenge negated Travis Konecny’s apparent game-winner with 37 seconds to play last night in Philadelphia.
The Oilers won both games in overtime. Both on goals by Jack Roslovic.
“Jack has been a great addition to our team,” gushed his head coach, Kris Knoblauch. “Five-on-five, power play, obviously overtime… We want more speed — I don’t think you can have enough speed in your lineup. He helps with that, and some secondary scoring that he has provided. So we’re very, very fortunate to have him.”
Fortunate. There’s that word again.
When you play in back-to-back Stanley Cups — when you win nine playoff series in four years — somehow you build up some credit with the Hockey Gods. Don’t ask us why, but it was that way for all the good teams over all the years we’ve been around the game.
But if you make your own breaks, as hockey lore would tell us, then it must be said that the Oilers were the better team in Philadelphia, outshooting the Flyers 32-21 in their OT victory. Edmonton earned its luck, but oh boy, their reward could not have been bigger than wiping that potential game-winner off the board, when video showed that Owen Tippett was clearly a few inches offside.
“It’s a game of inches,” said the Oilers head coach. “They got a goal taken away just being offside by a couple inches, and we were able to score the overtime goal just because we were onside by a couple inches.”
In a long season that will see the breaks fall both ways, the Edmonton Oilers have taken those two massive breaks and cashed in all four points — courtesy of back-to-back Roslovic goals in OT.
Or as the great Darren Dutchyshen used to say, “Back to back Jacks!”
Did he see a hole behind Philly netminder Dan Vladar on that OT snipe?
“Well, when it’s an empty net, you don’t really see a hole. You see just a really big hole,” Roslovic said. “The pass was great, right in my wheelhouse, and really hard for (Vladar), obviously.”
Roslovic becomes only the second player in Oilers history with OT goals in consecutive games — joining Andrew Cogliano (three in a row) in March 2008 — burying a pass from Matt Savoie on a two-man jail break in overtime.
Philly hit two posts in the game’s opening 90 seconds, as Edmonton hit the road for seven games in 11 nights, an odyssey that began with the Oilers ranked as the NHL’s 27th best road team. They play Columbus on Thursday, in a building where they’ve lost their last four games.
The Oilers haven’t won in Columbus since they beat the Blue Jackets 4-1 in October of 2019.
OIL SPILLS — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (undisclosed injury) did not make the trip with the team … Edmonton’s all-time record versus the Flyers is amazingly even at 39 wins, 40 losses, eight ties … The Oilers are the worst five-on-five team in the league, by goal share. But Evan Bouchard’s blast that made it 1-0 late in Period 1 was a five-on-five goal … Edmonton entered the game as the 31st ranked team in saves percentage (.862). Unless you’re talking five-on-five. Then it’s 32nd (.873).
