That wasn’t a good way to start the road trip.
On Monday, the Edmonton Oilers started a four-game road trip taking on the Buffalo Sabres. Unfortunately, their two-game winning streak came to an end, falling 3-2 to the Sabres in regulation. Let’s take a look at what happened in this game.
With six and a half minutes left in the first period, Tage Thompson shot the puck on Stuart Skinner, with the Oilers netminder failing to corral the rebound. Thompson jumped on the loose puck and opened the scoring for the Sabres.
Early in the second period, Darnell Nurse’s shot from the point found the back of the net thanks to a nice screen from Vasily Podkolzin. This was Nurse’s first goal since Jan. 3.
The Sabres regained their lead just over two minutes later, as former Oiler Ryan McLeod passed it back to the trailing Alex Tuch, who beat Skinner off the bar and in. Other than maybe not going into butterfly, there wasn’t much Skinner could’ve done to save this one.
Thankfully, the Oilers had an answer. Midway through the second period on their first power play of the game, Evan Bouchard scored his first power play goal with a netminder in net this season. It was his 12th of the season.
Just over three minutes into the third period, Podkolzin turned the puck over at the Sabres blue line, creating a fairly odd play. Although Evan Bouchard was ahead of Josh Norris and Tage Thompson, Norris won the puck battle and got the puck to Thompson, who was all alone in front of Skinner, making no mistake for his 33rd of the season.
Takeaways…
Jake Walman played in his second game with the Oilers, starting on the top pairing with Evan Bouchard. Although they were on the ice together for the Sabres’ first goal, there wasn’t much they could’ve done differently on that play. By the end of the game, Walman spent the majority of his shifts with Darnell Nurse.
Speaking of Nurse and Bouchard, both players scored in this game. The Oilers backend now has 36 goals, the fourth-most in the league. Bouchard has 12, Mattias Ekholm has eight, Brett Kulak has seven, Nurse has five, Troy Stecher has three, and John Klingberg has one.
The Oilers are missing Ekholm quite a bit. Ideally, he’d be playing alongside Bouchard instead of Kulak. Overall, the Oilers’ attention to detail wasn’t particularly great in this game, especially on the second Sabres’ goal.
Leon Draisaitl picked up assists on both goals, extending his point streak to 15 games. That’s a new career high for him and over his past 24 games, he’s been held pointless in just one game while scoring 17 goals and 38 points. Hard to argue that he’s not the front-runner for the Hart Trophy.
For the fifth consecutive game between the two teams in the Sabres’ home barn, the game ended 3-2. The last time the two teams had a different score was on Mar. 4, 2019, when the Oilers won 4-3.
Next up, the Oilers take on the New Jersey Devils in Newark on Thursday at 5:30 PM MT. Hopefully, they play better than they did on Monday.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. They can be followed on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.
