On a night of round numbers, Connor Brown was just happy to count to one.
In a National Hockey League career spanning 572 games, Brown had never scored an overtime goal. But while Darnell Nurse was celebrating his 30th birthday and Kasperi Kapanen was skating in career game No. 500, Brown finally broke his OT maiden with a slick one-timer off a Connor McDavid feed.
Brown doesn’t often hop the boards with the big boys in extra time. What was his strategy Tuesday in St. Louis?
“I just tried to get open and it worked. So, yeah, that was a nice little treat for me,” he smiled post-game.
How does a guy play nearly 600 games and never notch an overtime goal?
“I might have been cheating for defence a little bit in overtimes in the past,” Brown joked. “It was nice to get out there and look for a goal. Hopefully not the last.”
This game could easily have slipped away from the Oilers, who nursed a 1-0 lead into the third period but needed Leon Draisaitl’s league-leading 37th with the goaltender pulled just to stretch the game into overtime.
Cue McDavid, who had opened the scoring with a power-play bullet and fed Draisaitl on his patented one-timer for the game-tying goal at 17:46 of the third.
In overtime, the Oilers captain took a drop pass from Evan Bouchard (two assists), made a move that left Dylan Holloway swimming, backed off Phil Broberg and dished a puck over to Brown for an open-net one-timer.
It capped a three-point night for McDavid, and a coveted two-point night for the Oilers, who pull two points clear of Vegas in the Pacific, with a game in hand. Edmonton will make that game up Wednesday in Chicago, where a victory would give the Oilers a four-point bulge over a Vegas club hat has gone 3-8-3 in its past 14 games.
Edmonton, meanwhile, is 20-6-2 in its last 28 games. The Oilers are at 70 points on Feb. 4 this season, just two more than they had through the same amount of games (53) a season ago.
“We dipped a little bit there for a little while,” Draisaitl said of the third period. “It wasn’t our best, but good teams find ways to win hockey games at all times. To come back from that shows a lot of character.”
This was one of those nights where the Oilers could have made life easier with some offence early in a game they were dominating. But they got an iffy call on Mattias Ekholm, and the Blues capitalized before scoring another to take a 2-1 lead. Then Robert Thomas had the game on his stick and missed a gaping net on a one-time chance.
You’ve probably seen the highlight by now, but if the Oilers manage to win the division by two points or less, you can look back at that miss by Thomas as the reason why.
“The (Thomas) one,” Brayden Schenn told reporters in the St. Louis room. “A good player like that never misses, and unfortunately that was the one time he did.”
From there, the Oilers clawed back.
“Good players smell an opportunity,” Schenn said, “and at the end they made us pay for it.”
After a few games where he was perhaps somewhere below out-of-this-world, McDavid was a true superstar in the final period Tuesday, backing the Blues off every time he handled the biscuit.
“Your best players come up big with some huge plays,” observed head coach Kris Knoblauch. “On the game-tying goal, and then McDavid setting up Brownie on that (OT) goal. It was good that we stuck with it.”
Draisaitl’s 37th was a replica of the one that appeared to tie the game against Toronto on Saturday, but was taken off the board on an offside review. It’s become like Alex Ovechkin from the other side of the offensive zone — everyone knows the Draisaitl shot is coming, but no one can manage to stop it consistently.
“That kind of goal, that’s natural,” Knoblauch said. “The coaches would like to take credit for drawing that one up, but it’s just them playing hockey and reading on what’s available. That’s elite play.”
“All-world players,” said Blues coach Jim Montgomery. “You’ve got to know where those two are on the ice because they’re going to look for each other.”
Added Schenn: “You just have to know where they are at all times. You have to sit on top of them. At the end of the day, they’re going to make plays. They’re that dynamic, their chemistry’s that good. They’re elite talent. When you give them an opportunity to get back in a game, they make teams pay, and they did for us tonight.”
A humble Draisaitl has 37-42-79 through 53 games, leading the Oilers in points and duelling Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon for the Art Ross and Hart Trophies. He’ll ride that one-timer from the right circle right into the Hockey Hall of Fame one day.
“I’ve had a little bit of success over there,” he admitted. “We’ve got some great, great passers on our unit, and they seem to know exactly when to slide it over. It was a fantastic pass by Davo.”
OIL SPILLS — Adam Henrique (ill) missed his first game of the season … Now at 1,052 career points (357 goals, 695 assists), McDavid is tied in points with the great Islanders defenceman Denis Potvin for 79th in NHL history. Next up, Pat Verbeek at 1,062 … The Oilers have a late start (7:30 MT) Wednesday night against the Chicago Blackhawks.
