Fans who were underwhelmed by the Edmonton Oilers’ lack of big moves in the final week of trading braced themselves for the worst when one of the Central Division power teams, with its brand-new superstar in the lineup, rolled into town.
The Dallas Stars, who moved up to No. 1 one on almost everyone’s list of Western Conference favourites after landing Mikko Rantanen Friday, learned the hard way that you shouldn’t sleep on the Oilers.
The Oilers reminded the Stars that their best is still more than good enough to hang with anyone in the league. They also reminded themselves, and those same fans, that this team isn’t good enough to let its guard down for a minute, let alone 20.
A 5-4 nail biter isn’t the way they wanted this one to end after playing their best game in weeks to take a 5-1 lead through the first two periods, but all that matters now is that they avoided an utter catastrophe, beat one of the top teams in the NHL and showed how good they can be when they’re at their best.
When Connor McDavid is flying, when the top six wingers are producing, when some depth scoring kicks in, when they turn things up physically and when Stuart Skinner isn’t letting in soft goals, the Oilers are a tough out.
The home team got all of that and more Saturday night. McDavid scored a highlight-reel goal (his first even strength goal in 13 games), Zach Hyman scored twice (after scoring once in the previous eight games), Connor Brown scored his second goal in the last 32 games, Viktor Arvidsson scored his second in the last 18 and Stuart Skinner was excellent.
“We were faster, more direct,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “The scored was a little bit skewed; things were going our way, we were getting the bounces, but there were a lot of things I liked. We were able to capitalize on the few chances we had.”
Basically everything that hadn’t been working for the Oilers in a recent 4-7-1 slide was working in this one.
Right up until the third period when the Stars scored a power-play marker at 5:05 and an even-strength goal at 5:16 to make it 5-3 with lots of time to play. And when Matt Dumba banked a goal in off of Ty Emberson to cut it to 5-4 with 10:42 to play, it got deathly quiet.
But, in the face of enormous pressure and facing major embarrassment, they held the visitors off until the final buzzer. Despite giving up three in the third period, Hyman didn’t see any signs of collapse in his team.
“They had two power play goals and had one bounce off our own guy’s shin pad and in,” he said. “We had some tough bounces. I thought Stu played phenomenal. We just grinded one out.”
And Edmonton’s new guy? The one without the sizzle of a Mikko Rantanen or a Brad Marchand to Florida? Defenceman Jake Walman made his Oilers debut by going plus-three with an assist in the first period. He threw a home-run pass to set up Hyman’s second goal of the game, laid out Rantanen with a wicked open ice hit in the second period and showed some high-end offensive skills.
“I thought that was a heck of a start,” said Knoblauch. “The pass he made on the Hyman goal, the composure breaking pucks out. A big hit in the second period. Walking the blue line in the offensive zone. There was so much that we liked about his game. That’s why management thought very highly of him to trade for him.”
Jake Oettinger’s heebie-jeebies at Rogers Place continued. The McDavid goal made it four goals on Edmonton’s first nine shots. His last game in Edmonton saw him give up two goals on 10 shots, losing a game to Skinner in which the Oilers were outshot 34-10.
LATE HITS — The Stars lost their first-line centre as Roope Hintz took a puck in the face when it rode up his stick off am Adam Henrique shot.
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