Game Notes: Jets @ Oilers — Game 34

After winning the first game of this mini two-game series against the Winnipeg Jets, the Oilers will have a chance to bring out the brooms tonight on Hockey Night in Canada. A win here would give Edmonton a four-point lead on Winnipeg for second place in the Canadian Division.

1. After back-to-back frustrating losses to the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames, the Oilers have rebounded with back-to-back huge wins of their own to put that all in the rearview mirror. Hammering Calgary 7-3 after dropping the first game of that set and then coming back the following night and edging out Winnipeg 2-1 is an impressive swing that shows the team’s ability to be resilient and earn difficult victories.

2. Key to Edmonton’s victory last night was a stellar showing from Mikko Koskinen in the net. It’s been a difficult year for the big Finn after playing virtually every single game for the first month of the season while Mike Smith was on the Long-Term Injured Reserve but he’s started to turn things around. Since getting shelled for three goals on 10 shots by the Maple Leafs on March 1, Koskinen has had three strong starts in a row, stopping 76 of the last 81 shots he’s faced.

3. Of course, credit also needs to be given to the Oilers for playing a tight defensive game on Thursday night. All told, they only allowed Winnipeg to have seven high-danger chances at even-strength, and, in the third period, they held the Jets to four even-strength shots on goal and zero high-danger chances. That’s an impressive team effort defensively.

4. The Jets are a top-heavy team with a very good top-six but without a tremendous amount of offence behind that. Their three leading goal scorers, Kyle Connor, Nik Ehlers, and Mark Scheifele, have 16, 15, and 12 goals respectively, which adds up to 43 of Winnipeg’s 98 goals this season. If you manage to shut their two top lines down, you’ll be in a great position to beat Winnipeg. That’s exactly what the Oilers did on Thursday. Those aforementioned three had just four shots and two high-danger chances at even-strength.

5. Given Calgary beat Toronto on Friday night, the Oilers and Leafs enter Saturday still tied atop of the Canadian Division with 40 points each, though the Leafs have played two fewer games than Edmonton has. The Jets are two points behind Edmonton now with three games in hand so winning these head-to-head match-ups is critical for the Oilers to remain in a position of home-ice advantage. The Oilers are 3-2-0 against the Jets through five games this season and they play each other three more times, all in Winnipeg, after tonight.

Also important to Edmonton’s success against Winnipeg (and this goes both ways in this match-up) is staying out of the penalty box. The Jets boast a strong 25.5 power-play percentage and the Oilers were only penalized once (a tripping penalty to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins) all game.

6. With a two-goal performance on Thursday night, Connor McDavid is suddenly right behind Auston Matthews in the Rocket Richard Trophy race. Matthews currently leads the league with 21, McDavid is one behind him at 20, and Tyler Toffoli and Leon Draisaitl are after that with 18 and 17 respectively. McDavid, of course, has won the Art Ross Trophy twice in his career and it seems inevitable he’ll win his third this year, but winning the Rocket would be a first for him.

7. Barring injury, it seems very, very unlikely that anybody will be able to catch McDavid in the scoring race this season. He leads the league with 58 points, the closest player to him is teammate Leon Draisaitl with 49 points, and then the next highest after that is Patrick Kane, who has 42 points. That’s a 16-point lead on the highest non-Oiler in the scoring race, which is completely insane given the fact it’s been 33 games.

8. A really wild stat that puts McDavid’s production into context is the fact that his 58 points would have been enough to lead nine different teams (the Red Wings, Stars, Sharks, Blue Jackets, Ducks, Devils, Senators, Coyotes, and Wild) in scoring last season. All of these teams played at least twice as many games in 2019-20 than McDavid has in 2021.

9. McDavid’s 1.76 points-per-game would put him on pace to put up 144 points over a normal, 82-game season. The last time the league saw a player eclipse the 140-point plateau was when Mario Lemieux was doing so back in the early-to-mid 1990s. His point-per-game this season currently ranks as the 34th highest in a single season in NHL history, in between 1983-94 Mike Bossy and 1971-72 Phil Esposito. Nobody from the current era is anywhere close to this level.

10. Of course, this isn’t a normal 82-game season. There are only 56 games this year. The incredible accomplishment to watch for McDavid this year is whether or not he can reach the 100-point mark. If he operates at his current pace for the rest of the year, he’ll score 98. I remember in 2016-17 when McDavid reached 100 on the final game of the season against the Vancouver Canucks and how big of a deal that was. It’s absolutely wild how we’re actually talking about him scoring that amount of points in a shortened, 56-game season. I think he’ll do it.