Blue Jackets 7, Oilers 3 post-game Oil Spills: Connor McDavid vs Everybody
By Cam Lewis
6 years agoDespite getting out to a quick 3-0 lead, the Oilers imploded an allowed the Blue Jackets to come back with seven unanswered goals of their own. At least we had the McPoints.
Highlights
The Oilers got a quick lead when a combination of Connor McDavid’s quick forechecking and some horrendous communication between Sergei Bobrovsky and the Columbus defender leftRyan Nugent-Hopkins alone in front with a wide open net. Props to McDavid for the forecheck and props to Nuge for actually going to the net. This was McDavid’s 100th point of the season and he was just getting started.
McNuge connected again a few minutes later. McDavid worked past the Columbus defender, got the puck to Nugent-Hopkins, then busted to the net, collected a saucer pass, and roofed it over Bobrovsky on his backhand. I think Nugent-Hopkins is the only player on the team who can think the game at the same speed as McDavid does.
The Oilers went up 3-0 a few minutes later when Leon Draisaitl fed Drake Caggiula with a perfect backhand pass he roofed over Bobrovsky. Hell yeah, fan appreciation night, baby! We’re ROLLING. Bring on 2018-19! Woo!
Aaaaaaaaaaaand then this happened. Goal. Goal. Goal. Goal. Goal. Goal. Goal. The Blue Jackets scored seven goals to storm back and win the game 7-3. The defence looked like a turnstile, the forwards looked like they were skating through quicksand, and the goalies looked like shooter tutors.
By the numbers
This is one of those games where the good ol’ game chart summarizes perfectly what happened. This game chart shows the shot attempt differential at even strength as time goes along. As you’ll see, the Oilers played well at the beginning, score three goals, and then the Blue Jackets woke up from their nap. They absolutely hammered the Oilers the rest of the way. In total, Columbus had 50 even strength shot attempts to Edmonton’s 37 and 11 high danger chances to Edmonton’s three. The Oilers scored a shorty and a power play goal, so, otherwise at even strength, they didn’t do a hell of a lot.
Thoughts…
- Connor McDavid joined Wayne Gretzky as the only Oilers ever to have multiple 100-point seasons at the age of 21 or younger. He also joined Mark Messier and Gretzky as the only Oilers to have 100-point seasons in back-to-back years and he became the first Oiler since the early 90s to hit the 40-goal plateau. What can you say? McDavid is doing his thing. He’s been as good as anybody could ask him to be. Does anyone wanna come and explain how he isn’t worth $12.5 million annually anymore? I imagine those who were saying that last summer will be happy to eat their words.
- Nugent-Hopkins has become the ideal winger for McDavid. Like I said, I don’t think anybody on the team can think the game at the same speed as McDavid other than RNH. He has that same ridiculous vision in which he can predict what’s going to happen and, thus, he serves as a great playmaker. Given this newfound chemistry, if Peter Chiarelli goes ahead and trades RNH like many of us fear he will this summer, he should be put in a cannon and fired into space immediately. Mark Spector and Bob Stauffer have said recently there’s no way you can trade RNH at this point. Hopefully that’s an indication the team feels the same way.
- Do I care to list the bad things that happened in this game? Does anybody really want to hear it at this point? The team went ahead, sat back, kinda stopped caring, and then got hosed. The Blue Jackets absolutely manhandled the Oilers after the 10-minute point of the first period and the Oilers just didn’t have the wherewithal to get back into it. Ho hum, we’ve seen that a lot this year. I was watching the Blue Jays play their exhibition game in Montreal. I had the Oilers game on TV on mute and the Jays on my laptop. Vlady Jr. clubbed his walk-off homer as the Oilers were up 3-0 and I went to write something for Blue Jays Nation about it thinking “hell yeah, I can watch the Oilers spank the Blue Jackets after I’m done with this.” I looked up and suddenly it was 3-3. All I could really do at that point was shake my head. What a perfect summary for the 2017-18 season last night was. Bring on the baseball season.
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