THE BRIGHT SIDE

• First game as the Oilers head coach, first win in the bank. Nice start for Hitchcock.
• Remember when a certain media member said that Connor McDavid’s offence might go down a bit with Hitchcock as his coach? Connor remembers. He always does. Midway through the first period, Connor McDavid tied the game up at one with his 100th career goal after finding space in the slot and beating Jones with a quick snapshot. Nice way to give his new coach a taste of what he can do.
• Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored a huge shorthanded goal that tied the game at two apiece after he and Kyle Brodziak broke away on a 2-on-1 chance. Brodziak sent over the pass to Nuge and he roofed it. But then after he scored, all I could think about was how Nugent-Hopkins is 25-years-old and Ken Hitchcock is already his sixth NHL coach (7th if you count the few days he had with MacT).
• Drake Caggiula scored a huge goal early in the third period, answering back after Logan Couture gave the Sharks the lead late in the second period. Caggiula charged towards the net with his stick on the ice and tipped home a perfect centering feed from Connor McDavid.
• Are you surprised Leon and Connor closed the game out in overtime? Of course not. On what seemed like a broken play, McDavid got the puck out to Draisaitl in the slot and had it bounce in off his skate and past Jones. It may not have been the prettiest goal those two will ever score, but they all count and for that I’m grateful.
• After allowing a pair of goals in the first four shots against, Mikko Koskinen did a really nice job of settling things down and made the saves the team needed from him to get the win. It wasn’t necessarily a perfect game, but I liked the way he battled through the early adversity and never let the Sharks pull away on the scoreboard. Koskinen finished the night with 22 saves and a .880 save%.
• Darnell Nurse played a team-high 25:04 tonight and did a nice job with it. He was physical, moved the puck well, and rose to the challenge against a tough San Jose offence.
• Speaking of the defence, the entire top four played over 20 minutes with only Benning and Gravel finishing under 15 in total. Will be interesting to see how Hitchcock spreads the minutes around as we move forward.
• Solid night on the PK for the Oilers as they killed off all three chances they faced. More efforts like that, please.
• Booze not beets wincast is coming up! As always, you can follow along and join in the chat over on my Twitter.

THE FACE PALMERS

Photoshop: Tom Kostiuk

• Did anyone else burst out laughing when Donskoi scored only 45 seconds into the hockey game? I sure as hell did. Welcome to the Oilers, Ken!
• Marcus Sorenson restored the Sharks’ lead after he took a perfect pass from Joe Thornton into the slot and roofed it over Koskinen’s shoulder. For a guy that’s 12 feet tall, Koskinen gets beat upstairs a fair bit. Just me?
• Logan Couture gave San Jose the lead going into the third period after he absolutely walked past Adam Larsson (embarrassingly actually) and scored with under a minute left in the second period. For the second time tonight, the Sharks were able to beat Koskinen upstairs which will never cease to amaze me since he looks like he’s on stilts, but this one is on Larsson for losing his jock on the play.
• Only 40% in the faceoff circle tonight which is not good enough.
• The Oilers got blanked on the power play tonight, though they did only get the one chance. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the Sharks only cheated one time tonight but I guess the always consistent NHL referees saw it differently.
• Kris Russell left the game in the first period but I couldn’t tell exactly what was up. The report from Twitter was that he left for concussion protocol but, as you’d expect from the Caroline native, he was back in the game shortly after.
• I’m going to miss Todd McLellan’s suit game. The threads were always sharp and the haircut was always tight. Sail on, good sir.

SCORING SUMMARY

#GOODCONTENT

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