Connor McDavid had a goal and an assist as the Edmonton Oilers snapped a two-game losing streak with a 4-1 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets at Rogers Place Thursday night.
The teams combined for no goals and only six shots in the first period, with Columbus having a 4-2 edge. The record for fewest combined shots in a period in an Oilers game is five. That was set on Jan. 12, 1999 when Dallas outshot Edmonton 3-2 in the second period. Current Oilers coach Ken Hitchcock was the Stars’ bench boss at the time.
“It was definitely tight checking with neither team giving up much defensively, so we just stuck with it and had a good third period and came out with the win,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said after the game.
LISTEN BELOW: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
“I thought we stayed patient until we got our energy back,” Hitchcock said.
“I thought we played a patient, smart hockey game and then the big boys took over in the third period, which was kind of how you drew it up.”
The Blue Jackets’ David Savard opened the scoring with 8:25 left in the second, converting a cross-ice pass from Markus Nutivaara. The Oilers’ Kyle Brodziak fired home a wrist shot from the left wing 1:42 later. Joe Gambardella earned an assist on the play for his first NHL point.
Edmonton forward Zack Kassian one-timed a pass from McDavid 45 seconds into the third to put the Oilers up 2-1. With 5:58 left, McDavid got in behind the Blue Jackets’ defence. His shot hit the post, but rebounded out and bounced in off Columbus goalie Joonas Korpisalo. Nugent-Hopkins added a power-play goal just over two minutes later.
“We’ve talked about a lot of different things here,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said of his team being in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race.
“It’s not rhetoric. It’s not panic. We just have to have some sort of sense of urgency to try to get back into this here or we have no chance.”
“We’ve got to be a little looser and more excited about what’s at stake here rather than feeling the weight of it,” Blue Jackets forward Matt Duchene said after his team lost its third game in a row. “I just feel like we’ve got a piano on our back right now, as a group, and the hardest thing is we’re not scoring, so we don’t have that confidence that we can outscore teams and come back in games and things like that, so we’ve got to find that somewhere.”
Kassian tied a career-high with his 14th goal, set in 2013-14 when he was with Vancouver.
The Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl had three assists to reach 301 points for his career.
“Obviously it’s always nice to hit those milestones,” Draisaitl said. “A lot of good plays by my teammates.”
LISTEN BELOW: Leon Draisaitl
Nugent-Hopkins set a new career-high with his 25th goal of the season.
Mikko Koskinen made 19 saves for the win, which pulled the Oilers back within five points of the final wildcard spot in the Western Conference playoff race.
“We’re not stopping pushing here,” Nugent-Hopkins said.
“Regardless of how it looks when you look at the standings, we’re just going to keep pushing — keep picking up points here and see what happens.”
“Somebody’s going to get in,” Hitchcock said. “A lot of these teams start playing each other and we’ve just got to keep playing and keep winning hockey games. If we play the way we played tonight, we’re going to win a lot of games.”
LISTEN BELOW: Ken Hitchcock
The Oilers (33-34-7) will host Ottawa Saturday afternoon.
–With files from 630 CHED’s Brenden Escott and Scott Johnston
Watch below: Some videos from Global News’ coverage of the Edmonton Oilers’ 2018-19 season.
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