Derek Stepan scored 2:01 into overtime, giving the Arizona Coyotes a 3-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers Monday night at Rogers Place.
“Plays aren’t getting made,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said after the game. “There’s plays that have to get made –I call them NHL plays… and we didn’t have enough of them in the first half of the game.”
Listen: Head Coach Dave Tippett reacts to OT loss:
Oilers captain Connor McDavid scored a brilliant goal on the team’s first shot of the game 1:31 into the first. He blazed down the right side, cut in front and tucked a shot behind Coyotes goaltender Darcy Kuemper.
“I thought we did a great job of trying to limit their (Oilers) rush chances. That’s where they’re so dangerous, and they beat you quite often off of that,” Kuemper said. “We did a really responsible job of sitting above them, whoever is out there.
“It was a five-man unit defending against them.”
The Coyotes then scored on their first shot of the game two minutes later when Michael Grabner beat Oilers netminder Mikko Koskinen short side.
“Tough one. That’s one Kos needs to have,” Tippett said.
“It was big. To get one back, it kind of settled things down for us a little bit,” Coyotes head coach Rich Tocchet said.
Carl Soderberg put the Coyotes ahead in the second. He overpowered Edmonton defenceman Joel Persson and beat Koskinen high on the glove side.
“In a game like this, I don’t like giving up easy ones. They’re too hard to get, so why give up easy ones,” Tippett said.
“We weren’t great for the first half of the game, I thought,” McDavid said. “Second half, we found our rhythm, played fast and with energy and got pucks to the net.”
The Oilers carried the play in third period and finally tied it with 4:41 left when Gaetan Haas deflected a Matt Benning point shot. It was Haas’ first NHL goal.
“We show a lot of character,” Haas added. “It’s a positive, but at the same time, we lost today, so we’ve got to practise tomorrow and come back on Wednesday.”
Listen: Gaetan Haas scores first goal in loss
In overtime, Stepan took a pass on the left side and beat Koskinen up high.
“I was going to one-time it because I knew he was going to pass it,” Stepan said. “I had a gut feeling he was going to slide it over and with the way the ice was kind of in that overtime, it was a little bouncy, especially at that end because they spent a lot of time down there.
“I just wanted to settle it and just try to get everything on it.”
“We want to bring that full 60 minutes,” Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse said. “We know we could have been better at the beginning of the game, but we found a way to get that second one in the third, and we’ve got to find a way to finish it off.”
The Oilers (10-4-2) will host St. Louis on Wednesday.
–With files from 630 CHED’s Brenden Escott and Scott Johnston
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