It’s never a good thing when you lose to a Detroit Red Wings team that had dropped eight straight, even if the desperation level of such a team is higher than fans likely realize.
What’s good, however, is to erase that gloom just 24 hours later, waltzing into Nationwide Arena in Columbus as that back-to-back team that is supposed to be tired, and outworking the Blue Jackets from the drop of the puck to the final buzzer.
“It seemed like they were always a step ahead of us, to be honest,” Columbus defenceman Seth Jones told reporters after the game. “They were winning a lot more wall battles, a lot more 50/50 pucks. They ended up with the puck a lot more than we did.”
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And so Edmonton — a team that has trailed for more minutes this season then it has led — scored four times in the opening 24:56 and cruised to the finish line, becoming the first Western Conference team to reach 19 points. Edmonton is 9-4-1, while the Blue Jackets look like a team on an 82-game death march, a shadow of the club they were last season when they had Sergei Bobrovsky, Artemi Panarin, Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel.
So, all is right in Edmonton? Yeah, not quite…
The Big Takeaway
Yes, Jujhar Khaira did collect his first of the season, when a puck bounced off his leg and ended up in the Blue Jackets net. Give him credit: That’s how a 10-goal man ends a scoring drought — crash the net, “and be a bad goalie,” he laughed.
But here’s the stats sheet reality on Wednesday’s win: yes, Sam Gagner, Zack Kassian and Alex Chiasson each collected an assist. But once again, Leon Draisaitl (two goals and an assist) and James Neal (with his 11th) carried the Oilers offensively.
The big boys were the difference makers, but this was much more of a team effort, a sign that perhaps The Big Drought among the Oilers support scorers is coming to an end.
“A nice weight off your shoulders for sure,” said Khaira. “It’s been 12 (goal-less) games and I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve thought about it every single day.”
How about some offence from the goalie? Mike Smith fired a pass from right in front his goal to Connor McDavid, who was cruising across the offensive blue line while on the power play. The puck went to Draisaitl, who sent Neal in on a break for the game-opening goal. The Oilers are now 6-0 when scoring first.
“He’s probably better with the puck than I am,” Edmonton defenceman Oscar Klefbom said of Smith. “It’s a big asset for us.”
The power play scored one, and deposited another about 1.5 seconds after a penalty had expired. By game’s end, Draisaitl had 12 goals and led the entire league in scoring with 25 points, while Neal closes the month of October with 11 tucks — two short of Wayne Gretzky’s team record for the opening month of the season.
Neal becomes the first player to score eight power-play goals in the month of October since Jaromir Jagr in 2005, accomplished as a New York Ranger. As unproductive as all those depth guys that GM Ken Holland signed over the summer have been thus far, the Neal-for-Lucic trade has injected more offence into this Oilers team than anyone could have imagined.
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Neal, we are learning, is like a closer in baseball. If the team never gives him a lead, he won’t have many saves.
In Calgary last season, Neal simply did not get enough reps with centres who provided scoring chances. He’s getting the chances in Edmonton, where he’s proving to be the elite finisher Neal has been throughout his career.
Quick Hits
• What do you know? At age 26, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (two primary assists) appears to have figured out the face-off dot, the one area of his game that trailed behind the rest. Nugent-Hopkins entered the game with a team-best 52.3 per cent success rate this season, almost five per cent better than his career average heading into this season, and went 50 per cent on Wednesday.
In the first five years of his career, Nugent-Hopkins was sub-45 per cent (44.8%). Then he fell back to 43.8 per cent over the next three seasons. But this season his 52.3 percent is right up there with the big boys, a nice addition to his game.
• Riley Sheahan left the game with an upper-body injury after getting drilled by Pierre-Luc Dubois in the first period. But the good news was that defenceman Joel Persson returned from his concussion after missing seven games.
He played with Klefbom, allowing Kris Russell to return to the left side with Matt Benning, while pairing up Darnell Nurse with Ethan Bear again. The defence was noticeably settled.
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