THE BRIGHT SIDE

• Drake Caggiula quickly tied the game up at one after the Hurricanes (read: Auvitu accidentally) opened the scoring on a lucky goal in the crease. Caggiula took a perfect pass out front from Leon Draisaitl and the puck was off his stick as quickly as it was on it. Darling would have had to come up with a showstopper to prevent that one.
• Exactly a minute after Caggiula tied things up, Matt Benning scored a baseball-style goal that you’re probably going to see on highlights reels for a while. He charged to the net on a rush with McNuge and after his initial attempt bounced up behind the net, Benning was able to smash it out of mid-air and in off of Scott Darling’s back. Amazing display of hand-eye coordination. Wow.
• The good times kept rolling as Ryan Strome ended his mini-slump with his 13th goal of the year after getting some luck when his shot got caught up in Scott Darling’s pads. Pulujarvi started off this play with a perfect cross-crease pass to Strome and that pass deserves some love in this too even though it didn’t show up on the scoresheet.
• Pontus Aberg sat out the last two games because he was in the doghouse and he did his best to get out of it with his first as an Oiler. Leon Draisaitl made another beautiful pass to set up Aberg for a wide open net. Aberg wasn’t done there either as he added a pair of assists to make it three points on the night for what was easily his best game as an Oiler.
• Yohann Auvitu will score for anybody if you give him the chance. Not only did he open the scoring for the Hurricanes, he redeemed himself a little bit later with an absolute snipe show over Darling’s shoulder for his third of the year.
• Since setting up basically every one of his teammates for goals was starting to get boring, Leon Draisaitl got in on the act with a clapper from a bad angle that beat Darling and gave him four points on the night. Dude was a runaway freight train tonight and an example of how Leon can take over a game on his own. I want to see more nights like this from Big Sexy 2.0, please. Draisaitl finished the night with four points (1G, 3A). Keep McNuge together and let DraiPu develop something too.
• Jesse Puljujarvi had his best night in a while as he was banging, crashing, and dishing on basically every shift. He was rewarded for those efforts with his 12th goal of the year that snuck through Darling’s five-hole and triggered pizza delivery sales to spike across the city. Great game by the big fella.
• After not getting any points in Sunday’s game against Tampa, I was itching for some McPoints and I got a couple one tonight as he added an apple to the pile to give him 90 points on the year. The Art Ross race continues.
• Cam Talbot wasn’t lights out tonight but he made enough saves to get the win and hopefully gain a little dose of confidence that comes with it. Despite getting killed on the scoreboard, the Hurricanes outshot the Oilers 32-30 so it wasn’t like Talbot was allowed to take the night off. I’m guessing there was probably a goal or so that he’d like back but it doesn’t really matter when the offence puts up seven. Dadbot finished the night with 29 saves and a .903 save%.
• Huge minutes for Adam Larsson and Darnell Nurse as both guys played over 25 minutes on the night. Darryl actually played 27:22. Those two basically stayed on for the entire game and when you looked at the pairings you understand why. Solid night.
• More points for McNuge. They are magic together.
• I just want to go one record again to say that I’m a big JJ Khaira guy.
• I want to give Scott Darling a shout out. He helped a lot.

THE FACE PALMERS

• The Hurricanes opened the scoring under five minutes into the hockey game but the trick about this one is that it was actually Yohann Auvitu that put the puck into his own net. Auvitu hasn’t played in a while and I guess we’ll have to forgive him for forgetting which net to score on.
• Sebastian Aho ripped a wrist shot past Talbot that was both a rocket and also should have been stopped. The shot definitely had some mustard on it but you could tell by his reaction that Dadbot felt like he should have stopped that one.
• Teuvo Teravainen scored the third goal for Carolina after he found a soft spot in coverage and sent a bomb of a wrist shot past Talbot when the puck finally came to him.
• How did the Oilers fare on the special teams? I thought you’d never ask. *dodges thrown fruit*
  • 1/2 on the PK as they allowed Sebastian Aho the time and space he needed to rip one past Talbot.
  • 0/1 on the PP as the Oilers only got once chance somehow. I guess the refs thought both of these teams were very well behaved tonight.
• The Oilers got killed on the dot tonight as they won only 40% of the faceoffs they took.

SCORING SUMMARY

#GOODCONTENT

NATION 10TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY

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