The Edmonton Oilers have been saying all along, through troubling losses, personal slumps and a downward slide that lasted the better part of a month, that they “know what they have in here.”
It almost seemed like false bravado in the wake of five-straight losses, or crushing 7-3, 6-3 and 6-2 defeats at the hands of Philadelphia, Washington and Anaheim in a span of 11 days.
The Oilers might know what they have in there, but what we were seeing out on the ice looked nowhere close to Stanley Cup contender material.
A team at the top of everyone’s list of favourites when the season began, the Oilers were slipping fast and slid even further down the food chain when Dallas, Colorado and Florida stocked their rosters with coveted, high-end additions leading into the NHL trade deadline.
That’s why Saturday night against the powerful Stars, 40 minutes of it, anyway, is so important. You can’t just say that you belong in the same conversation as the premiere teams in the league; you need to show it.
They showed it. On the big stage Saturday night, the Oilers were starting to look like contenders again.
Connor McDavid, who’d been a mere mortal in recent weeks (two goals and eight assists in the first 11 games after his suspension), was dominant again, scoring a spectacular goal, adding a spectacular assist and turning Stars defenders inside out on almost every shift.
Zach Hyman, almost 30 points behind his pace from last season, scored twice in the first period after scoring once in the previous eight games.
Two of the Invisible Men, also known as everyone in Edmonton’s bottom six except Corey Perry, found the scoresheet — Viktor Arvidsson for the second time in 18 games and Connor Brown for the second time since Dec. 19.
Evan Bouchard didn’t get the primary assist on any Dallas goals. Stuart Skinner made the huge saves in the critical moments and was a key ingredient for the second time in as many wins.
And the new guys, defenceman Jake Walman and winger Max Jones, fit in perfectly. Walman looks poised and smooth at both ends of the ice, and Jones brings some much-needed physicality to a team with no identity on that front. Once Trent Frederic and Evander Kane are in the lineup, this team could be trouble.
Now, four goals on their first nine shots is not domination by any stretch, the Oilers weren’t fooling themselves on that front. But you make your own breaks, and it was puck movement, forechecking and net-crashing that made those breaks possible.
It was moving the puck out of their own end crisply and not turning it over in the neutral zone that made that 5-1 lead possible.
And while letting Dallas close it to 5-4 in the third period doesn’t look great, the Oilers showed legitimate steel in holding them off for those last 10 minutes.
‘Compete level’
“That’s probably the biggest thing I noticed, the compete level,” said Walman, who finished plus three with a sweet stretch-pass assist on Hyman’s second goal. “It was a good test. There will be battles down the road with these guys at some point.”
We’ll see what Monday in Buffalo and Edmonton’s four-game road trip reveals, but it looks like the Oilers might be on their way back. Or, as Hyman put it, they were never gone.
“If people forgot…” he shrugged. “We’re a team that’s been through a ton of adversity. I’m not saying we’ve got our A-game back by any means. I think there’s a long way to go, but I wouldn’t count out the group of guys that we have here, the experience that we have here.
“I think we’re pretty confident in this group, and we have a little stretch here to get to playing our best so that we’re feeling good going into the playoffs.”
Is this the playoff muscle memory kicking in? Now that they can smell the post-season, is this the button they planned on pushing?
The Oilers didn’t land any star power at the deadline, but they showed on Saturday that their best, something they haven’t shown in a while, might still be good enough.
“Over the last month, you look at our goal scoring and we need more from guys,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We had Arvidsson chipping in, Brown and Hyman, who’s been a regular goal scorer for us lately. It was nice to see him get his touch back.”
One game doesn’t mean much. The Oilers are at the stage of the season where they need to look good every night. But beating Dallas a day after the trade deadline is good for this team’s soul.
“I think that was kind of almost like a pre-playoff game,” said Walman, who loves being part of a playoff charge after spending all season on a San Jose team that’s dying on the vine.
“It’s like a different level, and I’m just really excited to play at that level, to play meaningful games.”
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