Collin Delia made 31 saves as the Vancouver Canucks rallied to beat the Edmonton Oilers 5-2 Friday night at Rogers Place.
The Oilers came out firing, recording the game’s first nine shots, but they couldn’t solve Collin Delia, who made some good saves early.
Derek Ryan broke through with a forehand deke on a breakaway halfway through the first. With 4.1 ticks on the clock, Connor McDavid nabbed his 30th of the season off a feed from Zach Hyman.
The Canucks struck 41 seconds into the second when J.T. Miller’s shot hit Stuart Skinner in the shoulder, went straight up, and dropped behind Skinner into the net. Miller tied it late in the period when he flipped in his own rebound on the power play.
“Unacceptable,” Zach Hyman said of the loss. “We had a good start–up 2-0 and the fresher team–and they’re able to score five unanswered. Obviously you can’t win like that.”
“It’s a little bit like whack-a-mole right now,” McDavid said of the team’s recent performances.
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“One problem pops up and we solve that, and then another one pops up. Five-on-five, penalty kill, power play–all of it needs to be more consistent on a nightly basis,” the Oilers captain added.
With 7:34 to go in the third, Bo Horvat took a rebound off the back boards and rapped in his 23rd to put the Canucks up 3-2. Ilya Mikheyev ripped a shot off the post and in to make it 4-2 with less than three minutes left. Horvat added an empty netter.
“You can say all the right things, but at the end of the day, you’ve got the eye test out there,” Hyman said. “Clearly we weren’t good enough.”
Horvat had two goals and two assists. The Oilers league-leading power play went 0/3.
“We created more than enough chances and just didn’t put one in,” McDavid said of the power play.
The Oilers, 18-15-2, will play in Calgary on Tuesday (630 CHED, Face-off Show at 5:30 p.m., game at 7 p.m.).
With files from Brenden Escott, 630 CHED
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