The Edmonton Oilers won their third in a row, hanging on for a 5-4 win over the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday night.
The Oilers outshot the Blackhawks 14-6 in the the first period but had a goal disallowed on the power play. Zach Hyman fired a shot past a downed Arvid Soderblom. Chicago challenged for goalie interference, and the video showed Hyman pushing Seth Jones onto Soderblom.
In the first minute of the second, Darnell Nurse sent a pass across to Leon Draisaitl, who fired it in for his 14th of the season. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins made it 2-0, converting a pass from Jesse Puljujarvi. The Blackhawks would get on the board thanks to deflection by Boris Katchouk.
Early in the third, Connor McDavid blazed down the right side and flicked a shot past Soderblom’s blocker. Mattias Janmark scored his first with the Oilers halfway through the third off a pass from Nugent-Hopkins on a two-on-one.
However, the Hawks wouldn’t go away. Max Domi scored on the power play, then MacKenzie Entwistle struck just 19 seconds later. Draisaitl responded to put the Oilers up 5-3 with 4:39 left.
“We got to find a way to lock this down a lot earlier than what we did”, Draisaitl said. “It’s something that we can improve, something that we can learn from but we’ll take the two points.”
Off the ensuing face-off, Nugent-Hopkins took a four-minute penalty for high sticking. Domi scored with 1:13 to go to keep the Hawks alive. Taylor Raddysh had a great chance in front with 15 seconds left but Stuart Skinner made the stop.
“We got the two points and we’re ready to move on”, head coach Jay Woodcroft said keeping his comments brief. “We’re going to get on a plane and go to Minnesota and prepare for a real good for a Minnesota Wild team.”
Nurse played his 500th career game, got 1 assist, and logged 29:09 of ice time.
The Oilers, 13-10, will play at Minnesota Thursday (630 CHED, Face-off Show at 4:30 p.m., game at 6 p.m.).
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