The Edmonton Oilers’ three-game winning streak came to an end Thursday night with a 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild.
“We put ourselves in position to play a good game and it was tight,” Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft said after the game. “Found ourselves down, but the team pushed as hard as it could all the way to the very last few seconds and unfortunately we made too many errors and they ended up in the back of our net.”
The Oilers scored the only goal of the first period when Leon Draisaitl smacked in a power-play one-timer from a sharp angle. Evan Bouchard and Connor McDavid had the assists.
The Wild pulled even on a power-play goal by Joel Eriksson Ek before the second was two minutes old.
McDavid recorded his 19th a few minutes later, finishing off a two-on-one with Draisaitl.
Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov tied it with a nice move in front on the power play.
Wild forward Freddie Gaudreau put a backhand over the right shoulder of Oilers goaltender Jack Campbell to give the Wild a 3-2 lead after two.
Minnesota forward Sam Steel got in behind the Oilers’ defence and went to the forehand for his fifth early in the third.
Mats Zuccarello added another for the Wild on a deflection.
Klim Kostin scored his first goal as an Oiler in the dying seconds.
“Our schedule hasn’t been kind to us the last little while, but every team goes through it,” Connor McDavid said. “It’s a tough week, lots of travel, especially when you play up in Edmonton. You know lots of travel that I’m glad is over. We get a little bit of a homestand now and we’ve got to find a way to string some together at home.”
The Oilers (13-11) will host the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday. You can hear live coverage of the game on 630 CHED, beginning with The Faceoff Show at 3:30 p.m. The actual game starts at 5 p.m.
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