Mike Smith made 26 saves for his third shutout of the season as the Edmonton Oilers grounded the Winnipeg Jets 3-0 Saturday night.
“A lot of things that we’ve been talking about the last few days in practice carried over into the game,” Smith said. “Credit to the group, we’ve had a little bit of a layoff here; that’s never easy to come into a game like that especially when a team’s been kind of humming around here. So I’m real impressed with how we handled their shots tonight.”
LISTEN BELOW: Mike Smith
The Oilers were playing their first game in a week after having games postponed because of the Vancouver Canucks COVID outbreak.
Kailer Yamamoto and Alex Chiasson had breakaways less than a minute apart halfway through the second, but both were turned away by Connor Hellebuyck.
The Oilers outshot the Jets 12-4 in the second and took the lead on a power play blast by Tyson Barrie. Connor McDavid assisted on the play for his 70th point of the season.
“Any time you have a couple of days off you can kind of regroup and look at your game and tweak the things that need to be tweaked and build on the things that you like,” Connor said after the game. “And I thought Tip and the coaching staff did a good job of that this week. I thought the players did a good job of buying in in practice and working hard and keeping ourselves ready and coming out and getting rewarded for it.”
LISTEN BELOW: Connor McDavid
In the third, McDavid shoveled a pass in front to Jesse Puljujarvi, who flipped in his tenth of the season. Chiasson deflected a Barrie shot for a power play goal to round out the scoring.
“The last few days we’ve had good energy, there’s a real positive feeling around our group,” head coach Dave Tippett said. “They were anxious to play, which is a good sign. And we got a chance to (get) some good practice time in and work on our game a little bit, and I thought we came out tonight and we played a solid game.”
LISTEN BELOW: Dave Tippett
The Oilers were 2/6 with the man advantage.
Leon Draisaitl had two assists.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins missed his third straight game with an upper body injury.
The Oilers, 26-15-2, will host Montreal on Monday.
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