They entered the game with playoff hopes calculated at 4.8 per cent, just five days removed from losing to the 30th-place Buffalo Sabres. And by the 54-minute mark, the Edmonton Oilers trailed 31st-place Arizona 2-1.
Then, something strange happened in Edmonton.
“A greasy win,” defenceman Oscar Klefbom called it.
“They don’t ask how,” said Zack Kassian.
The Oilers put in a 20-minute effort and had outrageous luck in overtime, as the crossbar behind Cam Talbot went off like the bells of London. When it was over, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had rifled home his ninth goal of the season in overtime, the Oilers were 3-2 winners and owners of just their second two-game winning streak of this horrible season.
“We had the bounces,” marvelled Klefbom after a decent, 21-minute night on the blue line. “They could score in overtime and everyone would be pissed right now. But we won this tight game, we got two points, and that gives us so much energy right through the group.”
It’s been a feat just for this Oilers team to string together two decent efforts in a row this season, let alone two wins. They still haven’t won back-to-back regulation games, a condemnation of a club that had 103 points a season ago.
“We play one good game, then we play two bad ones. Then we come together, play a good game, then play two bad,” Klefbom said. “So, it’s nice to play good in Boston then come back here to Edmonton and get a greasy win.
“We didn’t play our best game, but two points is two points. We’re not going to remember this game when it is, hopefully, playoff time.”
Hopefully.
Bear with us for a moment while we show some optimism, because if a season is going to turn, it has to turn right now for these Oilers. There are no more bad weeks allowed when you are this far back of the pack after American Thanksgiving, no more time for bad luck or misfortune to land another two points in the toilet.
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“I guess you could call us lucky in overtime,” gushed Oilers coach Todd McLellan, “because we gave up four or five chances before we got our first.”
“It’s nice for our confidence right now,” said Nugent-Hopkins, who has 18 points in 25 games this season. “In each of our last two games we came back from being down a goal. We are showing a lot more fight, a lot more resilience right now. It should go a long way for our team.”
After a holdover in the local 50/50 draw, the prize on Tuesday night was $259,177. It was by far the most exciting point in the evening for the local fans, ahead of an early breakaway goal by Zack Kassian — his first of the season — and a late wrister from Matt Benning that tied the game with 5:35 to play.
So, if we’re searching for reminders of the Oilers from last season, then a few nuggets that were unearthed Tuesday gives cause for hope.
Benning had a goal and an assist and was plus-3. He was solid and arrived with some offence just in time.
Kassian finally scored, by our count on his fifth clear-cut breakaway this season. Depth scoring has plagued Edmonton, and any offence from people at the bottom of the lineup is more than welcome.
Then there was Talbot, who was spectacular. He allowed the late-game heroics to still matter by limiting the Coyotes to just two goals, and wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of some luck in overtime if not for a stellar regulation.
“I had to come up with a couple of big saves there (in OT) and got lucky a couple of times off the post,” he said. “But those are the bounces that haven’t been going our way so it’s nice to get a couple of those.”
As a team, the Oilers haven’t won a game all season when they weren’t very clearly the better club on the ice. Good teams win some games when they don’t play real well, and the Oilers haven’t been good enough all season to benefit from one of those.
On this night, at least, a 20-minute effort harvested two points. It sounds kind of perverse, but that might actually be good news for the Edmonton Oilers.
“We’re not out of it, by any means,” said Kassian. “People had such high expectations of us, and so did we, and we didn’t get the start we wanted to. Even tonight, it wasn’t the prettiest. But we found a way to win.
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