The Edmonton Oilers won their sixth straight home game, topping the Philadelphia Flyers 4-1 Friday night at Rogers Place.
After a scrambly start to the game, the Oilers opened the scoring at 12:37 of the first. Leon Draisaitl sent a pass in front to Alex Chiasson, who sniped his career high 14th goal of the season. Connor McDavid earned the other assist to stretch his point streak to six games.
“Those two are going to create a lot, so sometimes I find myself in a position and I look around and there’s not that many players around me,” Chiasson said. “That’s kind of nice. I’ve been able to get some offence off that.”
The Oilers killed off a four-minute high sticking penalty to Drake Caggiula early in the second period.
“Lately — our power play — we’ve been doing nothing. It’s horrible,” Flyers forward Sean Couturier said. “It’s killing the momentum. we’ve got to be better.”
Later, Draisaitl was stopped in tight. The rebound went behind the net to McDavid, who scored by banking the puck in off Flyers goalie Anthony Stolarz.
“When we get down, I don’t know what it is but we get really down on ourselves and turn into a negative bunch,” Flyers defenceman Shayne Gostisbehere said.
Just 1:31 later, Adam Larsson wristed home his first of the season to make it 3-0.
“I thought our energy got better and better as the game went on,” Oilers coach Ken Hitchcock said.
“This is eight games in 14 nights, which is awful difficult, and to get points in the games playing at 70 per cent is pretty good.”
LISTEN BELOW: Connor McDavid
Couturier put the Flyers on the board with a deflection goal with 9:57 left in the third. McDavid sealed it with an empty netter in the final minute.
Mikko Koskinen made 31 saves to improve to 7-0 on home ice. McDavid had two goals and an assist. Draisaitl had three assists.
Defenceman Caleb Jones played in his first NHL game, finishing with 11:29 in ice time and leading the Oilers with three blocked shots.
“I had to settle in and get the nervousness out,” Jones said. “I feel like it’s definitely a game I can build on.”
LISTEN BELOW: Ken Hitchcock
The Oilers, 18-12-3, will visit Vancouver on Sunday night.
–with files from Brenden Escott and Scott Johnston