It seems the Edmonton Oilers have found their stride.
Since an embarrassing loss to the Minnesota Wild in mid-November in which the team allowed five goals, the Oilers have won six of seven games. During that stretch, they haven’t allowed more than three goals against in a single game.
This time last year, the Oilers were on an eight-game winning streak that helped to erase their ugly start to the season. Playing a strong, composed game focused on team defence was critical during Edmonton’s two winning streaks last season and their run to the Stanley Cup Final.
Head coach Kris Knoblauch said after the team’s 2-1 over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday that the Oilers put together a strong 60-minute effort, much like the ones he was used to seeing last year.
“Tonight, in that third period, I thought we played about as well as you can with the lead,” Knoblauch said. “It was a good, solid game and that takes a lot of maturity, a lot of composure. A lot of the stuff that we saw last year, playing a solid 60-minute game”
Connor McDavid opened the scoring for the Oilers in the first period after the Oilers had a goal taken back. Jake Guentzel tied the score in the second period but Leon Draisaitl put Edmonton back on top a couple of minutes later. Stuart Skinner outdueled Andrei Vasilevskiy with 21 saves on 22 shots for the win.
“We’ve got to be able to win games like this. The 2-1 and 3-1 games like that,” said Draisaitl. “It was certainly a good benchmark for us as to how we want to play these games and get them over the finish line. We have some good teams coming up. Those games are fun. We want to be one of those teams, we are one of those teams. It should be a good week for us.”
While the Oilers were happy to squeeze out an ugly win against the 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cup Champs, Tampa head coach Jon Cooper said that it was a bad hockey game by both teams considering the level of skill on the ice.
“That was a bad hockey game, actually, probably by both teams,” Cooper said. “There was a lot of talent on the ice, and I don’t think either team kind of had it. It’s just made worse that we didn’t get points out of it. We pushed in the third period and had our looks. We did. And they just didn’t go in. But I think we held the Edmonton Oilers to 43 shot attempts, not shots, shot attempts. You think, OK, you’re kind of doing the right thing.It was one of those nights where, when you play 82 of these, you’ve got to find a way to sneak some points out of them when you just don’t have it. And for most nights we’ve had it, but tonight we didn’t. I don’t know if they had it either, that’s what just kind of makes it sting a bit because we were there, there were some points for the taking. We just couldn’t grasp it.”
As Cooper said, teams need to find ways to win these sorts of games if they’re going to be successful. For the Oilers, that was the team’s first win in 2024-25 when scoring fewer than three goals. They won four games last season with one or two goals and they had 2-1 and 1-0 wins in the playoffs.
The Oilers have some more challenges on the horizon. The Minnesota Wild, who lead the Central Divison with a 19-5-4 record, will come to town on Thursday. The Vegas Golden Knights will look for their third win of the season against Edmonton on Saturday afternoon and then there’ll be a 2024 Stanley Cup Final rematch on Monday with the Florida Panthers.
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