LOS ANGELES — The Edmonton Oilers added one player on Sunday night, when they acquired defenceman Mike Green from the Detroit Red Wings.
Or you could say they added two players, with Connor McDavid returning from a six-game injury hiatus with a goal and two assists in a tidy 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Kings.
Or, you could say they added a whole bunch of players, because everyone simply plays better around here when McDavid is in the lineup.
“We did a good job of holding the fort when he was out, but he changes your team when he is in your lineup. Teams have to plan for him. He messes with matchups. Everything,” said linemate Sam Gagner, who played the perfect decoy on a two-on-one on McDavid’s goal. “At the end of the day the point of a two-on-one is to score, and he did a pretty good job of it.”
“(Drew) Doughty just went and stood with him,” shrugged McDavid. “Kind of just gave me a little bit of a breakaway.”
McDavid niftily buried a backhand (one of his six shots on net), set up Leon Draisaitl for his 36th, and crawled past Artemi Panarin in the scoring race, tying Nathan MacKinnon at 84 points for fourth best in the NHL. His team never looked in danger of losing to the last-place Kings, despite watching a 3-0 lead shrink to 3-2 before Josh Archibald’s empty netter.
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If GM Ken Holland can find his captain a left-winger with some scoring prowess before the Monday deadline, adding to the acquisition of Green, the Oilers could be a handful.
“Top players make other players around them better,” head coach Dave Tippett said of McDavid. “Sometimes it’s the player you play with, and sometimes it’s just the aura of being a good team. You play confident when you have good players. When he gets out there, and is really dug in and playing. … It’s what he brings, but he also drags a lot of people with him.”
The Oilers’ power play added a goal on Sunday to stay atop the league at 29 per cent. Now they’ll add Green, a 34-year-old quarterback who’s played nearly 900 NHL games, with another 76 playoff games on top of that.
Green is a right-shot puck mover. A guy who’ll hit you on the tape and make the plays that guys at the level of McDavid and Draisaitl should really thrive on.
“Great puck-mover, great skater, and a great guy to have in your locker room,” said Riley Sheahan, a long-time teammate in Detroit. “It gives your guys a sense of composure. He’s got unreal hands, and that instinct to make plays. I always love watching him. He’s a real smooth player.
“He’s going to be good with those guys, making plays out of the D-zone, hitting Connor and Leon with speed.”
“It’s exciting,” said McDavid. “I’ve been on the other side, when you’re losing friends. It’s nice to be acquiring guys, and trying to make a push.”
That’s the best news in Edmonton, where the Oilers kept pace with a Vegas win Sunday, setting up a beauty against the Golden Knights to end this road trip on Wednesday night in Sin City. After missing the post-season for 12 of the past 13 years, the Oilers look very much like a playoff team again.
They established a hard-checking game that can carry them through times when the big guns go dry, they’ve got goaltending (which was excellent again Sunday), and of course they have the two big cats that make the whole pride swell.
Now, they have a GM who is adding at the Deadline, not selling off for some endless rebuild.
“Any time you add a player the calibre of Mike Green,” began Mike Smith, who made 21 saves Sunday, “it’s an exciting time of year to be playing important games. This is why we play. When you’re adding players like him, it’s an exciting time for the group.”
The coach concurs. It does a lot for a dressing room when the GM pitches in and gets his work done.
“I look at those players in that room, they’ve earned the right to keep pushing here,” Tippett said. “Kenny’s added a piece for us, but I give the credit to the players. They want to earn the right to be a playoff team.
“We’re looking to try to get better down the stretch.”
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