Oilers 3, Canucks 2 post-game Oil Spills: Oilers match their longest winning streak of the season
By Cam Lewis
5 years agoThe Oilers hung on for a 3-2 win over the Canucks last night, extending their winning streak to four-game, which matches their longest run of the season. Unfortunately, all the other teams they’re chasing in the Western Conference playoff race also won, so the Oilers just stood their ground.
What happened?
The Oilers opened the scoring a few minutes into the first period when Sam Gagner found Alex Chiasson in front of the net for his 19th goal of the season. The assist gave Gagner his 300th point as an Oiler. Is Sam Gagner The Answer?!?!
Before the end of the first, the Oilers extended their lead to 2-0. Leon Draisaitl brought the puck into the zone, did a spin move to protect the puck, hit Connor McDavid in stride, then McDavid hit Zack Kassian who was crashing the net. The work by Draisaitl and McDavid to open up space here was excellent. Kassian has also figured out that if you go to the net with your stick on the ice when playing with these two, good things will happen.
Early in the second, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins gave the Oilers a 3-0 lead with his 21st goal of the season. The goal also gave RNH 57 points on the season, which broke his career-high of 56 set in back-to-back seasons in 2013-14 and 2014-15.
Vancouver would add a couple of goals to make it interesting, but the Oilers shut the door in the third period. They also managed to miss another open net, but thankfully it didn’t come back to haunt them.
By the numbers
The first period was wide open as both teams peppered a bunch of shots on net. The Oilers carried play in the second period but then went into a defensive shell in the third. While the Canucks got 26 shot attempts in the third (in all situations), the Oilers limited them to just nine actual shots on goal.
Thoughts…
- As I said at the beginning of this post, Edmonton has matched their season-high with this four-game winning streak. Their other four-game streak came back in November towards the beginning of Ken Hitchcock era when they beat St. Louis, Minnesota, Calgary, and Colorado. That streak came to an end when Oscar Klefbom went down with an injury and the season subsequently started to spiral downwards.
- While it might be too little too late, the Oilers have played quite well recently, and, at the very least, they’re making things interesting in the final few weeks of the season. They have points in eight of their last nine games, but, unfortunately, they haven’t made up much ground in the playoff race because three other teams have also started playing for their lives. Over the same stretch, the Wild have gone 6-0-2, the Stars have gone 6-2, the Coyotes have gone 7-1, and the Oilers sit seven points out of a playoff spot with 15 games left to play.
- I can understand why people would want the team to lose games down the stretch in order to improve their draft position. There’s merit to that given the higher draft choice will have more of an impact on the organization than wins in March that very likely put the team just short of a playoff spot. Still, there are genuine positives to build on when looking at this stretch. Edmonton’s good play over their last nine games isn’t just some random sample size I decided to grab. It all coincides with the Oilers finally icing their ideal blueline. Andrej Sekera made his season debut on Feb. 19 against the Coyotes and the team has just one regulation loss since. Sekera has slotted in alongside Matt Benning on the team’s third pair playing roughly 15 minutes per game. The pair has been strong in their limited minutes, but, most importantly, it means guys like Darnell Nurse and Oscar Klefbom don’t have to play well above their heads to compensate for scrubs on the bottom pairing. It’s amazing the difference one steady, veteran player can make on the team.
- It’s important for the Oilers to be patient as they work through cleaning up Peter Chiarelli’s colossal mess. That means no major free agent signings and no trading draft picks and prospects for immediate help. What this stretch indicates for me, though, is that this team, with a healthy blueline, is good enough to squeeze into a playoff spot next year. The team is far from a contender, but they can still be competitive as they slowly navigate through cap hell. The last thing I want to see is for the next general manager to come in and trade prospects to help immediately fix the team right now. While the team right now is far from perfect, strong play with a healthy blueline suggests to me this team without any major moves can be good enough to make the playoffs.
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