The Tampa Bay Lightning were icing a small lineup and playing their third road game in four nights. They had lost the night before in Vancouver and were without their two best forwards in injured Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov.
Edmonton, meanwhile, was rested, relatively healthy, and coming off their first three-day break of the National Hockey League season.
No contest, right?
Yeah, that’s not how things tend to shake down in the NHL.
“We had no excuses,” said Edmonton defenceman Adam Larsson. “Three days off, quality practices. You could tell all the boys were mentally and physically prepared today.”
So how did it take a shootout for the Oilers to finally claim both points in a 3-2 win?
“They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Final,” cautioned Larsson. “They’ve got a pretty good system there. Overall, it was a really strong game for us.”
In each NHL market across Canada, fans and media chart their team’s progress inch by inch, game by game. In reality though, the best teams in hockey have lots of forgettable victories like the one the Oilers claimed Saturday night, with Tampa hitting a crossbar in overtime before Connor McDavid’s first ever shootout goal stood up as the winner.
Of course, McDavid meticulously planned out his shootout move, leaving no detail to chance, right?
“I just do whatever,” he said after the game. “I should probably plan it out a little bit better. I just do what feels right, I guess.”
“I knew he was going to stickhandle a lot and I thought I had it,” said Tampa goalie Ben Bishop. “He put it right between my shoulder and glove. I just kind of tried to be patient, I didn’t really go down, I thought I had it and, obviously, he put it in a good spot.”
McDavid went pointless on the night but played a team-high 24:55. Only silky Tampa defenceman Victor Hedman played more for either team.
“We didn’t [plan that] we were going to play him 24 minutes,” said McDavid’s coach, Todd McLellan. “But we didn’t plan on going to overtime. We planned on having more of a lead and not having to come from behind. Sometimes plans don’t go the way they’re supposed to.”
These were two points for Edmonton that fans would only remember a month from now if they had not been earned. The Oilers had every chance in the opening 40 minutes to put this game out of reach but executed poorly, rescued in the end by a pair of powerplay goals in a come-from-behind win.
“Some real good early jump but not so much the polish,” said McLellan. “The passing, receiving could be a little cleaner and I thought we didn’t come out of our end very well. But it’s a win. A comeback win. We’ve been on the other end of a few of those lately, so it’s nice.”
Give the Lighting credit. They went at it Saturday without injured regulars Stamkos, Kucherov, Ondrej Palat and Ryan Callahan. They were 2-7-1 in their prior 10 games and their record before Stamkos’s injury (10-6-1) paled in comparison to the Bolts’ mark without their superstar sniper (5-8-1).
With significant injuries and a tough road schedule, the Bolts were a Vladimir Namestnikov crossbar away from ending this in OT.
“It’s better,” said Jonathan Drouin, who sniped a lovely goal. “It’s not where we want it to be, but still, I think tonight’s a great step in the right direction. Third period, I thought we played them really tight, they didn’t have much going on, one power play goal off a nice tip. It was a good game for us.”
That tip came from the stick of Leon Draisaitl, who is quickly proving himself Edmonton’s second best forward. He had a goal and an assist, and through 33 games, he’s got 14 goals and 28 points.
A 25-goal season is not an unreasonable expectation now from the 21-year-old German, and 30 is clearly within reach.
“He is so important to our team right now,” McLellan said. “We’ve still got some key people struggling to get on the scoreboard [Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle, Benoit Pouliot], and maybe even more than Connor, Leon is the guy who has been able to step up and fill that void.
“He’s become an essential part of this team.”
A team that won a bit of an ugly one on Saturday — and couldn’t care less how it looked.
