EDMONTON -- Mike Smith did for Jay Woodcroft, from his spot in the Edmonton Oilers goal crease Friday night, what he was unable to do from the trainer’s table for Dave Tippett.
He bought his team the time it needed to find its game.
The end result was a 37-save, 3-1 win for Smith and the Oilers against the befuddled New York Islanders, as the Woodcroft era began with a ‘W’ in Edmonton.
“It’s a good team win, and I thought our players really played hard for each other,” said Woodcroft, uttering a preferred coaching phrase that fans should get used to from the 45-year-old. “Mike Smith turned him in a performance that allowed us a chance to get to work our way into the game. I thought we got better as the game went on tonight.”
The coach’s assessment perfectly summed up a game in which Natural Stats Trick had the High Danger Scoring Chances at 10-3 for New York after 40 minutes, but then evened out at 10-9 by game’s end.
But the difference was this. How many nights has a sluggish start left Edmonton behind 2-0 or 3-0? On this night, Cody Ceci’s seeing-eye shot made it 1-0 late in Period 1, then Zach Hyman’s 100th career goal came on a far side snipe past Ilya Sorokin that Smith just wasn’t about to let pass on this night.
Edmonton had the better goalie for the entire night, and the better team for the final 30 minutes. You wouldn’t have one, surely, without the other, and in his third game back from injury Smith -- for one night at least -- found mid-season form.
“As a player, you kind of can get your wits about you and maybe go out there and shorten your shifts and maybe get a bump or grind and get to that and do little things that it gets you in games,” the 39-year-old goaler explained. “But as a goalie, there’s no real feeling out process. In the first game I came back everything was going super fast out there. The puck felt (as small as) a bubble hockey puck.”
It looked more like a beach ball against the Isles, the team with the fourth most anemic offence in the league. You can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it must be said: With the amount of Grade A chances allowed in the opening 30 minutes, this game could have had a different result had the Isles shown more finish.
“In sports, winning solves everything,” said Hyman. “And that's just the reality of things.”
Connor McDavid had a pair of assists and was diligent defensively, while Woodcroft employed his forwards a bit differently than the previous coach had. For one, after 40 minutes McDavid and Leon Draisaitl -- by far the leaders in ice time among Edmonton’s forwards for the season -- were fifth and sixth in ice time.
By game’s end they were both in the Top 3, but it was surely a different route to the same place, as a new coach took over with a slightly different plan.
“Yeah, that was by design tonight,” Woodcroft admitted of his deployment. “It's also the third game of four nights for our team. So I was cognizant of that.”
With only a morning skate under their belt, Woodcroft and recently promoted assistant coach Dave Manson could not install many nuances into the game plan. But this was a start -- a place to begin logging some video upon which a new coach can hope to improve his team.
“In terms of tactical, we felt that we could improve our physicality in the offensive zone,” Woodcroft explained. “I thought the first goal (shot through a crowded crease) is a great example of that. We want to be hard and physical on offence. The other thing that we talked a lot about is that we wanted to make the other team work through a group of five men in all three zones.
“And what I really liked to see was when the game was on the line in the third period, we valued hard plays.”
If Edmonton can change anything to heighten its playoff chances, should the Oilers qualify, it would be to become a harder team to play against. Harder to enter their zone; harder in front of their net; harder to take a puck away from in the offensive zone.
On Night 1, Mike Smith allowed them to celebrate some improvements in those areas, as the Oilers got that familiar bump that a coaching change always seems to provide.
But they’ll have to improve tangibly from what we saw Friday, because better teams will cash in on all those chances the Oilers gave up.
It was Smith’s first win since Oct. 16. It’s amazing -- isn’t it? -- what some goaltending will do for a team.
