Nobody can say the Edmonton Oilers aren’t making things entertaining.
They gave up 19 third-period shots but hung on to beat Buffalo 3-2 on Saturday. They needed an empty-netter before they could exhale against Seattle on Monday.
And they completed the hat trick of drama Thursday by going down to the last shot against the Detroit Red Wings.
Only this time it was the other guys who scripted the finale.
Even without injured Patrick Kane in their lineup the Red Wings pushed Edmonton to the brink, then pushed them a little bit farther into overtime, then to the shootout and finally shoved them over the cliffs of defeat.
Detroit’s 3-2 decision ends the Oilers win streak at three games. The Oilers haven’t been at their best recently, but they have seven of eight possible points over the last four games and remain tied for first in the Pacific with Vegas, who lost in overtime to Columbus.
“They’re a pretty fast team and we gave them too many opportunities to play fast, spring each other on odd man rushes and get a couple of breakaways,” said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “Overall we played an all right game, but there was a bit of a stretch there where we gave them too many easier opportunities.”
The Red Wings are a different team under new coach Todd McLellan, posting the exact same record over their previous 15 games (11-3-1) that the Oilers did. So assuming this was going to be an easy one because the Oilers were fourth overall and the Red Wings were 19th was a rookie mistake.
It was a battle from start to finish.
“He can get you motivated and you’re seeing that right now from this team,” said Nugent-Hopkins, who spent a few years under McLellan in Edmonton. “They’ve got a lot of young skill and they play a fast game and he encourages that a lot.”
They say you have to work for your breaks, so in a first period that saw the Oilers outshoot Detroit 14-7, it’s fair that they capitalized on a couple of fortunate bounces — Wings defenceman Ben Chiarot whiffing on a clearing attempt to set up Leon Draisaitl at 6:49 and goalie Alex Lyon whiffing on an attempt to freeze the puck, setting up a tap in for Jeff Skinner at 10:29.
Although a 2-0 lead at the first intermission didn’t come by conventional means, it was well earned.
This is where the Oilers were supposed to hit the gas and pull away, but they let up and got sloppy. Instead of scoring a goal to make it 3-0, or 3-1, they let some of their old habits from the close calls with Buffalo and Seattle creep back into their game and found themselves all tied up after 40 minutes. And then 60 minutes.
“I’m not sure if I can put my finger on exactly what the change was,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “They played a little bit quicker, a little bit faster. We had every opportunity to put them away early in the game, to get that third goal. We were just missing that.”
After Edmonton’s fortune in the first period, nobody could cry foul when the Red Wings scored two goals of their own in the second period to tie things up, despite being outshot 23-12. Neither Michael Rasmussen’s goal at 9:59 nor Dylan Larkin’s at 11:47 were things of beauty, and both could have been avoided with better puck management, but they all count.
“We had some looks, we could have had another one, maybe,” said Skinner. “It would have been nice to have another one while we had the lead. And even when we were tied we still had some looks. Just one of those games where we would have liked to get the next one and they won in a shootout.”
The Red Wings made quick work of it in the shootout, scoring on their first two shots while Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins missed.
Thursday marked the Oilers debut of defenceman John Klingberg, who joined Mattias Ekholm on the first pairing while Evan Bouchard skated with Darnell Nurse.
“We didn’t want to over-extend how much he was going to play,” said Knoblauch, who gave the veteran puck mover 16:39 of ice time. “I thought he made an excellent first impression.
“He’s able to break the puck out. Defensively, I thought he was good. He made some nice plays. Got in the way. We’re in Game 51 and he didn’t have a training camp and missed a good portion of the regular season, for a guy to come in and play against a team that’s been playing pretty well lately, I thought John did a good job.”
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