The Day After: I mean… the Oilers won?
By Zach Laing
2 years agoNo, you weren’t transported to the 1980s when you watched the Edmonton Oilers beat the Detroit Red Wings 7-5 last night.
There weren’t no Steve Yzerman’s or Gerard Gallants on the ice, nor was there Wayne Gretzky or Mark Messier.
But as much star power was on display in their Tuesday night clash at Rogers Place.
Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider and a strong cast of characters around them managed to fill the net 12 times in the highest-scoring game of the night.
“I was talking to a couple guys in the room saying ‘now that we saw the result, it felt like it was going to be one of those games,” said Oilers forward Evander Kane, who scored two goals in the affair. ” You can kind of feel that some nights aren’t going to be perfect and you’re going to have to grind one out and maybe just outscore the other team like we did tonight.
“We let them hang around a little bit, especially in the second period. Then they jumped on us in the third and like I said, we had to respond. It’s good we came out with the win.”
Edmonton had arguably the best start to any game this season jumping out to a 3-0 lead under five minutes into the first frame. Devin Shore, McDavid and a nimble Zach Hyman all helped make that happen. Detroit, however, managed to slither their way back in the game as the Oilers took their foot ever-so-slightly off the gas.
They got one at the 8:46 mark of the first, then Sam Gagner scored with just under two minutes to go in the first. While Filip Zadina and Marc Staal, who scored his second of the night, evened the game up early in the third, Edmonton fought through adversity to secure the win.
Kailer Yamamoto, Kane and eventually Warren Foegele, who scored the game-winning goal, helped the Oilers get there.
“We’re not going to bury our heads in the sand and pretend there weren’t things in our game that have to get cleaned up. We will address those,” said head coach Jay Woodcroft after the game. “I was talking with (Edmonton Oil Kings head coach) Brad Lauer this morning. I had a coffee with him and his staff in their room and he used a great line.
“He said: ‘The wins are pieces of art, but you don’t always hang every picture in the living room. Sometimes you hang them in the basement.’ And I thought that was a really good way of putting it. Brad’s a really funny guy and I’m going to steal that one, because I think it adequately describes tonight’s game.”
For the Oilers, they took care of their own business — the most important part of the night. It also puts the Oilers at 3-0 halfway through a five-game homestand leading into the NHL’s Monday trade deadline.
Next up? Buffalo Saturday night and the New Jersey Devils Saturday afternoon.
What they’re saying…
Wings’ winless streak reaches six games, rally falls short in 7-5 loss vs. OilersEdmonton, Alberta — Another Red Wings loss, and it hurt them. But unlike some of them during this recent losing stretch, this one was different.Warren Foegel’s (sp) wraparound goal snapped a tie and Evander Kane’s second goal was an empty netter, sending Edmonton to a 7-5 victory.But the Wings rallied from a 4-1 deficit, tying the game early in the third period. They rallied after being down 5-4. But the Wings couldn’t do it yet one more time, seeing their winless streak go to six games (0-5-1) while having won only twice in their last 11 games (2-8-1).“Very disappointing, they score three there to start and have the puck in our zone for three minutes,” forward Dylan Larkin said. “We talked about whatever happens in this game, whatever happens we’re going to play and play hard and stick together and we did that.“We knew to hound, they don’t want to play defense and our forecheck was how we got pucks back. Unfortunately it took us too long to get going, but once we got going we were a dangerous team and we had them on the ropes.”The Wings scored three goals on six shots — after Edmonton did so to begin the game – tying the game 5-5 early in the third period. Marc Staal (his second of the game), Filip Zadina (power play) and Lucas Raymond had Wings goals, as the Wings rallied twice tying the game.Sam Gagner, in his return to Edmonton and in his 946th NHL game — tying his dad Dave in games played — scored his seventh at 18:06 of the second period, a bad-angle goal against goalie Mikko Koskinen, cutting Edmonton’s lead to 4-2 and giving the Wings some life.
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.
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