EDMONTON — Milan Lucic knew his team was due for a good break. Or two.
“We’ve had empty nets this year where it didn’t go in,” he said. “Sometimes that’s all it takes. Off two skates and in.”
It’s that easy, right? Off two skates and in.
An Edmonton Oilers team that watched every bit of luck fall to their opponents two nights before in Pittsburgh, losing to the Penguins 2-1 in overtime, watched two pucks carom into Dallas’ net off of Stars defencemen Thursday in Edmonton. That included Matt Benning’s game-winner, which hit Alex Radulov’s foot and ricocheted past Ben Bishop for the game-winner with 2:27 to play in a 5-4 Edmonton win.
And with a massive “Phew!” the Oilers won just their third game of the season, opening a nervous five-game homestand with a victory.
How bad has it been in Edmonton? The win pulls them to within seven points of the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, and 10 of the Pacific-leading Los Angeles Kings.
“Just getting the two points right now is big for the morale of the group,” admitted Ryan Nugent–Hopkins, who notched goals three and four on the season. “We are a pretty mentally solid team in here, no matter what we go through. But we needed the confidence at some point, so this was a big step for us.”
It’s a pattern as old as the game itself: Team can’t defend, loses some games, then goes to work on its own end. They figure that defensive part of the game out, as the Oilers did in allowing just five goals on its recent three-game road trip, but then they can’t score, managing just four.
Then, finally, the dam breaks. An Edmonton team that went into the game with just 15 goals in eight games scored 33 per cent of their season’s output in one night against Dallas — all at even strength, we might add.
“We stuck with it. Other than winning, that’s the biggest positive,” said head coach Todd McLellan. “The penalty kill (allowed three goals) could have dragged us right down and it didn’t.
“We knew that, eventually, the shooting percentage was going to go up. That we’d get one off a skate, a lucky one.”
After beating the Calgary Flames 3-0 on opening night, the Oilers team shooting percentage had been mired at 3.5 per cent in the seven games since. Like their collective luck, that simply had to change at some point.
On Thursday they scored five times on 35 shots (14.3%), losing the special teams competition to Dallas but taking the five-on-five battle by a decisive margin.
“That’s the big hump we got over as a team,” said McLellan. “I could talk about the negatives that we have to fix (special teams), but I’m going to focus on us having the ability to outscore that team 5-1 at even strength. That’s a good sign.”
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Edmonton opened the scoring for the first time in seven straight games, but found itself trailing 4-3 when Esa Lindell scored a power-play goal at 10:25 of the third. Nugent-Hopkins and Benning rescued this one, on a night where Jamie Benn scored twice and Leon Draisaitl notched three assists.
“They worked hard and they got a couple of bounces,” Benn said of the Oilers. “We could take a page out of their book for this next game (Friday in Calgary). It’s tough to score goals, and you’ve got to work for everything you get. Sometimes, you do a little extra, you get a couple of bounces.”
Edmonton sighed a breath of relief with this one, considering the rest of this homestand goes Washington, Pittsburgh, New Jersey and Detroit. They’re now 3-5-1 — not great by any means, but this precious breath of air will go a long ways.
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