It took about 55 minutes longer than anyone expected it would, and the Edmonton Oilers had to reach elbow-deep into the fire to pull it out, but they eventually snuck past the second-last team in the NHL.
What was supposed to have been lopsided forgone conclusion — the hard-charging Oilers trouncing the hapless San Jose Sharks for fun — would up turning into one of the most stirring finishes of the season.
The game wasn’t close, which is kind of ironic in an overtime win, but Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov, in just his third start of the season, turned a blowout of a hockey game into a 3-2 thriller.
Edmonton outshot San Jose 23-7 in the second period and 42-22 overall, so there’s no way in the world they should have needed a tying goal from Mattias Ekholm with 18 seconds left in regulation and a winner from Leon Draisaitl 18 seconds into overtime.
But they did. The Sharks goalie played his, ahem, Askarov.
“You have to give a ton of credit to that guy over there, he stood tall,” said Oilers forward Corey Perry, who didn’t need to explain who he was talking about on a night when one player stole the evening, if not the game.
“We had the puck all night. Their goalie played extremely well but we found a way to get one at the end and finally solve him. We stuck with it, we found a way and our big boys came through.”
It looked, for 59 minutes and 42 seconds, that the Cinderella storyline would play out in a stunning upset, undoing some of the gains Edmonton made during its 4-1 run through Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Vegas, Florida and Boston.
If you could measure frustration in ounces, the Oilers were lugging kegs of it on their backs by the late stages of the third period. There’s no other way to feel when a 22-year-old Russian goalie who just returned from an AHL demotion is eating your lunch.
“It’s just about a sense of patience,” said Draisaitl. “Sometimes those games are tricky because you seemingly have the puck all night and you’re creating looks and have lots of O-zone time.
“Then you give up a Grade-A the other way because you’re not quite as sharp. Sometimes there’s some frustration that creeps in, but I thought we did a good job today.”
This wasn’t a trap game, a letdown after the high of beating up on some of the best teams in the NHL. The Oilers played great, they just got goalied to within 18 seconds of their life.
In a perfect world Askarov deserved a win, but he’ll have to settle for an OTL in a performance for the ages.
“He kept us in that game the whole way,” said former Oilers defenceman Cody Ceci, “It’s great to see, especially from a young guy, to have that much composure and play against some high-end talent and do as well as he did. It’s awesome for us.
“He looks like he’s having fun, too. He’s always smiling, making big saves and having fun out there.”
Askarov is no fluke. He was 1-0-1 with a .927 save percentage in two NHL games this season and in 14 games in the AHL he was 9-4-2 record with a .938 save percentage and three shutouts.
The former 11th-overall pick isn’t coming out of nowhere. And if the division rivals from Edmonton didn’t know about him before, they do now.
“I didn’t think we were ever going to score again, to be honest,” said Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard. “But the one that tied it was great and the overtime goal was even better.”
Pickard stood up well against the unenviable stress of knowing that one more goal against over the final 40 minutes was going to be mean a loss. It’s not easy sitting cold for long stretches of time, watching your team bang its head against a brick wall at the other end, but he delivered a handful of game-saving stops to improve to 8-2 in his last 10 starts.
“He gives us a chance every time he’s in there,” said Draisaitl. “He makes the big stops. He seemingly, knock on wood, wins every game that he goes in. He’s been nothing but amazing for us the last two years.”
And for the Oilers, this makes two 11th-hour wins in a row. They score with 2:21 left to tie it against Boston before winning in overtime and now they break San Jose’s heart two days later.
If it’s possible that a one-goal win over a team with a .386 winning percentage, which is ahead of only the worm-eaten corpses in Buffalo, can give a team a boost of confidence, this was it.
“I think we’ve done a good job the last two nights of finding a way to put away the game,” said Draisaitl.
“It just creates a little bit of belief and a little bit of character. You have to find a way to win any kind of hockey game in this league and the last two nights we certainly won two the same way. You don’t want to do that every night, but sometimes you need those.”
E-mail: [email protected]