Connor McDavid returned to the Edmonton Oilers lineup, scoring a goal and helping his club beat the Seattle Kraken 4-2.
The win helped propel the Oilers back to the top of the Pacific Divison, a day after the Vegas Golden Knights regained the spot with a 4-1 win over the Florida Panthers.
But in Edmonton, it wasn’t the start to the game the Oilers hoped for. Seattle scored just three and a half minutes into the game when Eeli Tolvanen’s would clean up a puck lying in front of the Oilers net. There was some controversy with it, though, as the Oilers would unsuccessfully challenge the goal.
See, Kraken forward John Hayden had driven the net hard, right into the blue paint and into goaltender Calvin Pickard. But since Oilers defenceman Brett Kulak was partially in, the goal would stand.
In the eyes of Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch, that play was right in line with what he’s seen elsewhere in the league for goals that were disallowed.
“We look at challenged goals all the time,” he said after the game. There was one tonight that got disallowed very similar, where the player goes in on his own, there is some contact with a defenceman and it was upheld, no goal. There’s about three in December, two involving Buffalo, very similar.“Tonight, Kulak makes most of the contact with our goalie, but there was inital contact with their player on his own that hits our goalie. Looking around the prescedent for disallowed goals, I felt that was right in line with what they disallowed.”
The Oilers would get the subsequent penalty kill and started to crawl back into it when Mattias Janmark got on the board with five and a half minutes to go in the first, redirecting a Connor Brown shot come, and helping the GDB’s Not-So-Obvious Game Day Prediction come true. Vince Dunn would get one back for the Kraken by the end of that frame, but that would be it for them.
Edmonton would push back, as McDavid scored, followed by Corey Perry, who continues to turn the clock back this season. Mattias Ekholm would seal the game with an empty-netter.
Through it all was a third straight rock-solid performance from Pickard, who turned aside 26 of 28 for a .929 save percentage.
“He’s been a rock,” said Perry. “When he goes in there he plays hard and he gives us a chance to win each and every night. He has a tough assignment, coming in every few games and being ready to play, but he’s a true professional. He does it every game and we have all the confidence in the world.”
Pickard, much like Stuart Skinner — who was away from the team as his wife Chloe gave birth to their second child — has seen his season start to turn a corner. Monday marked his 16th start, securing his 13th win, and while he was putting up wins early, his second appearance of the season tanked his numbers.
That game against the Chicago Blackhawks saw him give up five goals against. Monday’s win boosted his save percentage for the year to .901, but if you remove the five goals from 20 shots he gave up against Chicago, that save percentage is actually .908. He’s given up four goals once and has only given up three goals five times this season. He’s given up two goals eight times, and one goal against twice.
The Oilers have been riding high for some time, now up to 22-6-1 in their last 29 games dating back to November 23rd. No team has accumulated more standings points over that time than the Oilers’ 45 — one more than the Washington Capitals in one fewer game — consistently outplaying opponents night in and night out.
Goaltending has played a big part of it, Knoblauch said, but so too has their special teams with a power play operating at a 30.4 percent clip, the third-best in the league, and the fifth-best penalty clip, operating at an 84.1 percent clip.
“During that time, you look at special teams, how good our special teams are, and then the other one is our goaltending,” he said. “Our goaltending has been really solid throughout that stretch — both of them have been really good for us.“You get goaltending and special teams, and that’s a big part of it, but then your best players. McDavid, Leon putting up the numbers they have consistently. Those three things, you’re going to win a lot of hockey games.”
He’s right on that, as over that stretch the Oilers have a .913 save percentage, second-best in the league to only the Capitals.
What else plays into it? Hockey heading north, Perry said.
“It was a lot of north, and we’re playing north,” he said. “We’re playing with the puck. We had some shifts where we were cycling the puck well, moving around to get shots and that’s our game.“It’s when we go rogue and when we go off-script is when we start losing things. I thought tonight, we did everything we needed to to get two points.”
Edmonton will get two days without a game before returning to action Thursday night against the Detroit Red Wings.
Zach Laing is Oilersnation’s associate editor, senior columnist, and The Nation Network’s news director. He also makes up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter, currently known as X, at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
