Outscoring their mistakes isn’t an option for the offensively-challenged Edmonton Oilers right now.
The day will come again when they’ll be able to bury an opponent with a few well-place shots, but in the meantime they’ll settle for smothering them with a pillow until they stop kicking.
Like they did Friday night against the New York Islanders and again on Sunday against the Rangers.
Edmonton’s offence was nothing to get excited about on either night — one goal in regulation against the Isles and one goal through 40 minutes against the Rangers — but they never trailed in either game and came away with four points.
A 2-1 overtime decision over the Islanders and two goals in the third period to dump the Rangers 3-1 appear to be Edmonton’s much-needed road map back to success.
“That’s definitely our mandate, it’s how we want to play games,” said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who assisted on all three Oilers goals (Corey Perry in the first period and Viktor Arvidsson and Connor McDavid in the third) at Madison Square Garden.
“Overall, that needs to be our mindset over the last 15 or so games. The last two games, especially, is the way we want to play — frustrate teams, lead with our defence and the offence follows that.”
They frustrated the heck out of the Rangers, that’s for certain. The Oilers almost had as many shot blocks (19) as the Rangers had shots (22).
And, when something did get through, much-maligned goaltender Stuart Skinner simply out-duelled his $11.5 million a year counterpart, Igor Shesterkin.
“I felt good, I felt calm in there,” said Skinner, who checks in at $2.6 million a season. “I felt like I made saves when I needed to and the guys played really well in front of me, especially at the end when it was six-on-five and we were up by two. We were still blocking shots and that’s a huge credit to the guys, they don’t have to do that when there’s only 10 seconds left.”
It’s funny how that works out. When a team is playing hard, stout defence, the goalies magically get better. Two nights earlier, Oilers backup Calvin Pickard took down another high-paid Russian star, Ilya Sorokin ($8.25 million), stopping 24 of 25 shots in the 2-1 decision.
It’s not always the most exciting brand of hockey, and there’s not much room for error when the guys on offence are struggling to find it (the Oilers have been held to two or fewer goals in five of their last 10 games and three or fewer goals in nine of their last 10), but it resulted in a pair of very important wins.
“When we keep things tight it makes it tough to play against,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “When a team plays like that it’s frustrating and (the other guys) start to cheat a little bit. If we keep doing that teams will eventually start to leak.”
So after a bleak start to the trip, back-to-back 3-2 losses in Buffalo and New Jersey, the Oilers return home from the road trip at 2-2. That’s not great, but it moved them into second place in the Pacific Division, one point ahead of the Los Angeles Kings (who have two games in hand) and closed the gap on first place Vegas to four points.
“That’s just average and you always want to do a little better than that, but the way things started it’s nice to get the last two and feel good about going home,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch, who believes his team is starting to come together after a miserable re-start following the 4 Nations Face-Off break.
“We’ve been building ever since the Florida game. We didn’t win it, but since then I think we’ve been building our game. We were rock bottom in those three games after the break (6-3, 7-3 and 4-1 losses to Philadelphia, Tampa and Washington).
“Since then I think we’ve been getting better (5-3). There is still room for improvement, things we can get better at, but it’s been a gradual climb. That’s what we want, we just want to get better.”
18 AND COUNTING
Leon Draisaitl’s first period assist on the Perry goal extended his points streak to 18 games, the longest by an Oilers since Wayne Gretzky in 1986. Only four Oilers, Gretzky, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, have ever had streaks of 18 games or more.
MEN DOWN
The Oilers are still a few men down. Mattias Ekholm’s lingering injury continues to linger. It’s been six games now and the Oilers don’t expect him back for Tuesday against Utah. Zach Hyman also sat out Sunday’s game while he recovers from a minor injury sustained Friday night against the Islanders. And Trent Frederic is still waiting to make his debut for Edmonton after coming over from Boston prior to the trade deadline.
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