Just when they begin to teeter, when you start to wonder if perhaps this is a season that just isn’t meant to be, the Edmonton Oilers manage to rein it in. It’s a tough way to live, but on the other side, you could say it builds character.
The Oilers reeled off eight straight wins to right their awful start to the 2023-24 campaign, and then Thursday — after a 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders to open the trip — Edmonton enterd the third period down 3-2 to the New Jersey Devils.
With a Friday game against the Eastern Conference-leading New York Rangers, that third period in Newark was imperative for an Oilers team that rode a three-game losing streak into the game. Four straight loses could very easily turn into five, and you know where it goes from there.
So, what happened next?
How about three goals in 69 seconds early in the third period, by Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and the unlikely Adam Erne? From there, Edmonton coasted to a 6-3 win.
“It was very similar to the Winnipeg game (a 3-1 Oilers win),” said head coach Kris Knoblauch, “where I thought we could have been up, we weren’t, but we stuck with a game plan and it paid off in the third period.”
It was the 100th time that both McDavid and Draisaitl had scored in the same game, but it was Erne’s drive to the net and lovely finish that had everybody in blue and orange smiling. The fourth-liner drew into the lineup for the first time since Nov. 28, with Knoblauch assigning Connor Brown a seat in the press box for this one, and Erne took a puck to the net before making a nice move to score his first of the season on Vitek Vanecek.
“Dad’s in the stands, best buddy’s in the stands… Great time to get my first,” said Erne, the former Detroit Red Wing who hails from nearby New Haven Connecticut. “We only come out here once this year. Usually I get to be around here a lot more, playing in the East in the past. So it was definitely special to able to perform in front of them.”
Erne is that depth guy who gives his team a real boost when one manages to go in. His was the third goal in a 69-second span that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 5-3 lead. Ryan McLeod would score his second of the game to get the Oilers to six, a lead they weren’t about to give back.
“We were so happy for him on the bench. It was almost a month his since his last game,” Knoblauch said. “It was nice to see him score the goal, but I thought he broke up a lot of plays defensively, he made some plays breaking the puck out on the wall, and he played a really big game. That’s what we expect from and he delivered.”
McDavid’s all-around game was all-world on this night, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins also gave his team an elite performance. Draisaitl is still struggling along somewhat, but find the highlight of his goal. It was an elite backhand.
This was a night where the Oilers outshot New Jersey 18-6 in the middle period, but got outscored 2-0 in the frame. The fallback when pucks don’t go in for this team is to get cute, to make that extra pass. But on this night the Fancy Dans turned into a bunch of Straight Ahead Freds in the second intermission, and came out with a strong, get-the-puck-to-the-net game in the third, earning all four goals they scored.
“Sometimes you just need a bounce, and we got one there early,” said McDavid, referencing his own goal when he found a rebound and patiently buried it. “Then Leo makes a special play that not a lot of guys can make, and Big Earn chips in with another big one a couple seconds later. It’s a big stretch of the game.”
This was that rare win with a backup in net for Edmonton, who chased Akira Schmid after two goals on their first six shots, then sifted four more past Vanecek. Calvin Pickard, meanwhile, ran his lifetime mark against the Devils to 4-0 with a relatively quiet 23-save performance.
This marked the end of the season series with New Jersey, with Edmonton sweeping both games. In 15 career games against the Devils, McDavid has a point in every one and 27 in all.
He’s just happy to snap a three-game losing streak, with a chance now to take a two-game heater into the Christmas break.
“We’ve had lots of chances, we’ve just been finding ways to lose games,” McDavid said. “Tonight was a good show of resilience. You need one of those to snap a losing streak like that.”
