It’s been about three weeks and a span of 10 games since the Edmonton Oilers last won back-to-back games, and both of those contests were overtime victories.
But going into Saturday night’s contest with the visiting Winnipeg Jets, Connor McDavid said he sees some signs that the Oilers, fourth in the Pacific Division and one point behind the Chicago Blackhawks in the race for the final Western Conference wild-card spot, are trending in the right direction.
After getting blanked by the Minnesota Wild 1-0 on Tuesday, the Oilers blew out the Seattle Kraken 9-4 on Thursday, with McDavid scoring his first hat trick of the season to go with an assist and Leon Draisaitl finishing with a goal and three assists.
“I feel like we’re playing better,” McDavid said. “It’s nice to score some goals and feel good about ourselves. It’s been a little bit of a grind here finding wins. It’s nice to put a good one together. … Hopefully, guys are feeling good about themselves and can build on it.”
Edmonton went 4-for-5 on the power play and 2-for-3 on the penalty kill with rookie center Matt Savoie scoring both a short-handed and a power-play goal. Eleven Oilers scored a point in the contest, and Edmonton scored three goals in each period.
Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said he believes his team still has some work to do defensively. Edmonton, which lost to Florida in the Stanley Cup Final in each of the last two seasons, has allowed seven or more goals three times in its last 13 games.
“We still have things to work on,” Knoblauch said. “But I’m starting to see a lot more things from our team that I like, and it all starts with a compete and attention to detail in the defensive zone.
“If you don’t compete and if you don’t defend well, you can’t win regularly. You can win once in a while. You can catch a team off guard, win a shootout game. But unless you can play consistently good defensive hockey, you won’t have much success.”
Winnipeg will play the second game of a back-to-back that began with a 4-1 victory over visiting Buffalo on Friday. Eric Comrie made 34 saves, Kyle Conner extended his goal streak to four games, Cole Koepke and Gabe Vilardi each had a goal and an assist, and Tanner Pearson scored what proved to be the game-winner on a breakaway in the second period.
It was just the second win in the last eight games for Winnipeg, which had lost to the Sabres 5-1 on Monday in Buffalo.
“I just thought it was a good, solid game where we forced them to play in their end a lot more, certainly more than we did in Buffalo, and we got rewarded for it,” Jets coach Scott Arniel said. “As a group, our details and our compete, some of the things that maybe I’ve talked about in the past that weren’t up to speed, I thought tonight as a whole we did a better job.”
Now the Jets face a quick turnaround with the trip to Edmonton.
“Yeah, I think that’s kind of the way this year has been, obviously,” Pearson said. “We’re all in the same boat; everyone’s going through it. Can’t really complain. … Back to Edmonton and get the job done.”
–Field Level Media
