Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Connor McDavid both recorded four points as the Edmonton Oilers beat the Carolina Hurricanes 6-4 Thursday night at Rogers Place.
“It was a big win for our group — a great test and a really good Carolina team,” Connor McDavid said.
“They gave us everything we could handle. I thought Soup made some big saves and our power play did its thing.
“It was a bit ugly, but we’ll take it.”
The Oilers opened the scoring on a power play 8:22 into the game. Tyson Barrie held in Sebastian Aho’s clearing attempt. A few seconds later, Barrie’s point shot was tipped in by Zach Hyman.
“Scoring the first one is big. I thought our whole first period was good, which is obviously a good sign,” McDavid said.
Early in the second period, Andrei Svechnikov’s long wrist shot eluded Jack Campbell to even it 1-1.
The Oilers came back with two goals in 2:01.
The fans certainly got their money’s worth with the goals tonight,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “We’re in October, there’s some ‘scramblyness’ to most teams but the most important thing is we found a way to win against a team that hadn’t lost yet this year.”
Ryan McLeod took a pass from Nugent-Hopkins and finished a shorthanded two-on-one.
Then, Evander Kane blazed in after taking a pass from McDavid and tucked the puck under Freddie Andersen to make it 3-1 Oilers.
Svechnikov wristed home his second of the night to cut it to 3-2.
In the second minute of the third, Andersen got caught behind the net, allowing Nugent-Hopkins to flick in a shot from a sharp angle.
“Good teams need to rise to the challenge of other good teams,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We had that mentality coming in — of keeping it simple and just trying to outwork them every shift.”
“I’m proud of the group in here to bounce back after a couple of tough games.”
Svechnikov completed the hat trick on a power play a couple of minutes later, but Leon Draisaitl replied quickly on an Oilers man advantage to make it 5-3.
Carolina came right back with a power play strike by Martin Necas, as the team combined for four goals in the first nine minutes of the third.
Aho got in behind the Oilers defence with just over a minute left, but Campbell came up with a huge save. McDavid scored into an empty net to put it away.
“He should feel good about his game tonight,” Woodcroft said of Campbell, who made 36 saves.
“He was clutch when the moment called for it. He made big saves and, in the end, the one thing he cares about is putting the ‘W’ on the board and that’s what he did for us tonight.”
The Oilers, 2-2, will host the St. Louis Blues on Saturday. The 630 CHED Face-off Show starts at 12:30 p.m. and the game is at 2 p.m.
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