Mattias Ekholm spoke earlier this week about teams needing to make a statement every once in a while.
Well, Tuesday night against Tampa Bay was one of those games for the Edmonton Oilers.
In a test of how good the new-look Oilers really are right now, a heavyweight matchup against one of the Eastern Conference power teams, the Oilers answered the question with a meticulous and suffocating 2-1 victory.
“Against a really goof offensive team with a lot of firepower, we come in with the mindset that we want to win 1-0, 2-1, and we were able to execute on that,” said Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse, who embodied Edmonton’s mindset from start to finish. “And Stu (Skinner) made some huge saves for us in big moments as well. It’s a good sign for us.”
In the first game of a wicked stretch against some of the best teams in the league, the Oilers showed they belong in the same conversation, improving to 16-10-2 on the season and 10-3-1 in the last 14 games.
“It brings a certain amount of energy and focus when you’re going up against big teams,” said Skinner, who had all the protection he needed from his teammates in a 21-save win. “It kind of tells you where we are as a team. A lot of lessons learned and a lot of moments where we can see what we’re capable of.”
The Oilers were simply better in this one, grinding the visitors to a a nub.
The Lightning, who rank second in the NHL in goals per game and boast the fourth-best goal differential in the league (+22 heading into Tuesday) spent most of these 60 minutes in a frustrating and fruitless effort to generate something offensively.
They didn’t get their 20th shot of the game until there were two minutes left in the third period.
“There were some times (Tampa) made some really good passes and I was a little bit out of the play and (the defencemen) would get a stick on it,” said Skinner. “I could go down the list of how many good defensive plays we made tonight.
“I felt like that was on both sides. It was a game of intelligence and smarts. That’s why it was was such a tight game. It was just a full-on team battle, both sides, for 60 minutes. Just a really, really solid game.”
The Oilers were an iron curtain defensively, choking out the neutral zone, busting up Tampa’s cycles before they could get started and giving the visitors fits with their transition game.
The Oilers had four breakaways in the first 40 minutes — two for Connor McDavid and two for Draisaitl. They each scored once to give Edmonton a 2-1 lead at the second intermission.
It was a textbook effort. It lacked the stakes and the physicality of a playoff game, but the attention to detail was almost flawless.
“Tonight, in that third period, I thought we played about as well as you can with the lead,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “It was a good, solid game and that takes a lot of maturity, a lot of composure. A lot of the stuff that we saw last year, playing a solid 60-minute game.”
Goals are goals, sometimes they go in and sometimes they don’t, but this kind of defensive foundation is what long playoff runs are built on.
“We’ve got to be able to win games like this, 2-1, 3-1, games like that,” said Draisaitl. “It was certainly a good benchmark for us as to how we want to play these games and get them over the finish line.”
The only gaffe was a big one. On a night when the Oilers weren’t giving Tampa very much, Evan Bouchard gave them a goal, trying to force a pass across the middle of his own zone, with two guys on him, to a teammate who was being covered.
That one hurt, but the Oilers were still up by a goal with 20 minutes to play.
The third period has given Edmonton the occasional problem this season — they’ve lost seven games when tied or leading after 40 minutes. And there was a major scare when Ryan Nugent-Hopkins took a penalty with 1:42 to go and Tampa batted one in with a high stick. But Edmonton closed the deal.
“They are a dangerous group over there so you’ve got to be alert,” said Draisaitl. “They can make stuff happen out of nothing, so I thought we did a pretty good job of playing down the clock in the third and not giving them too much and continuing to just push and play our game.”
After this, the Oilers get three division leaders in a row: Minnesota, Vegas and Florida.
“We have some good teams coming up,” said Draisaitl. “Those games are fun. We want to be one of those teams, we are one of those teams. It should be a good week for us.”
Draisaitl’s goal gives him 20 on the season and marks the ninth year in a row he’s hit 20 goals, tying Wayne Gretzky for the third longest run in Oilers history behind Jari Kurri and Mark Messier at 10 each.
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