The Edmonton Oilers opened their crucial six-game homestand with a 6-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday (Dec. 6) at Rogers Place.
Zach Hyman notched his second hat trick of the season for the Oilers, who won their fifth consecutive game overall while also extending their home winning streak to five games. Mattias Ekholm, Warren Foegele and Ryan McLeod also scored for Edmonton, and captain Connor McDavid dished out three assists.
Stuart Skinner, who has started every game during Edmonton’s current streak of victories, made a season-high 39 saves. Veteran forward Jordan Staal was the only Carolina player to solve the Oilers netminder.
Here are three takeaways from Wednesday evening’s win for the home squad in Edmonton.
Reversal of Last Game Between Oilers and Canes
What a difference two weeks can make. On Nov. 22 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, the Oilers were soundly beaten by the host Hurricanes, 6-3. The result was Edmonton’s third straight loss, dropped the team to 5-12-1, and left Oil Country in a state of utter panic.
Related: 3 Takeaways From Oilers’ Third Straight Road Loss to Hurricanes
The team looked lost, the season looked lost, and hope among the fanbase was all but lost. And since then, the Oilers haven’t lost, going 5-0-0 with three of those victories coming by a margin of at least five goals.
It’s appearing more and more like that defeat in North Carolina was the Oilers’ moment of truth. And the specific image that continues to resonate is that of McDavid being overcome by emotion on the bench at PNC Arena as he watched his team go down to defeat. At that point, McDavid had 16 points all season. He’s added 16 more points in the last five games.
Two weeks earlier, the Hurricanes jumped to a 4-0 lead over the Oilers in the first period. Wednesday night, the script totally flipped, with Edmonton leading 4-0 after 20 minutes. In fact, the game was over before it was a minute old: McLeod tallied 21 seconds after the opening faceoff, and Ekholm scored what would prove to be the game-winning goal 20 seconds after that. Clocking 41 seconds, they will enter the record book at No. 2 for the fastest two goals from the start of a game in Oilers history.
Red Hot Hyman Keeps on Scoring
Hyman scored back-to-back goals at 5:46 and 14:03 of the first period, then completed his third career hat trick when he put the puck past Hurricanes goalie Antti Raanta at 9:35 of the third period. That gave him five goals in two games against Carolina this season, and seven goals in his last four games versus the Canes.
It can’t be overstated how truly incredible Hyman is playing, nor how important his contributions are to the Oilers. Last week, he was picked as Edmonton’s MVP so far this season, and nothing has changed since.
The veteran winger leads the Oilers with 15 goals this season. That’s five more than Leon Draisaitl, who scored 107 times over the previous two seasons combined, and nearly twice as many as McDavid, who had 64 goals in 2022-23. Only five players in the entire NHL – Brock Boeser (18 goals), Nikita Kucherov (17), Sam Reinhart (17), Auston Matthews (16) and Artemi Panarin (16) – have lit the lamp more often than Hyman so far in 2023-24. He is now on pace to score 55 times this season, which would smash his career high of 36 goals that he set in 2022-23.
Just as impressively on Wednesday, Hyman registered a plus/minus rating of plus-4 for the second time in 2023-24. That ties him for the most games with a plus/minus of at least four by an Oilers player in a single season since 1991-92.
Knoblauch Posts Good Record Over First 10 Games
Wednesday’s tilt was the 10th as head coach of the Oilers for Kris Knoblauch, who took over behind the bench after Jay Woodcroft was relieved of his duties last month.
That number of games is significant: When Edmonton changed coaches after just 13 games, one of the biggest questions faced by Oilers general manager and president of hockey operations Ken Holland and CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson was, why not give Woodcroft, who had until to that point great success as Oilers head coach, more time?
“I guess we could get into the debate: is 13 games enough?” Holland said on Nov. 12 at the press conference introducing Knoblauch. “I think if you wait another 10 games and things don’t change, it’s probably too late, so Jeff and I felt that it was something that needed to be done.”
Ten games later, the Oilers are 7-3-0 under Knoblauch and have climbed back into playoff contention. It’s fair to ask whether Edmonton would have done just as well (or perhaps even better) over this stretch had Woodcroft been given an opportunity to turn things around, but that’s irrelevant now: Edmonton is getting the results it needs with Knoblauch.
The Oilers will need to keep this up in Game 2 of their homestand, at Rogers Place on Friday (Dec. 8) when they host the Minnesota Wild.
Like Edmonton, the Wild are finding early success with a new head coach, winning their first four games since firing Dean Evason on Nov. 27 and replacing him with John Hynes. Minnesota will be on a quick turnaround, as the Wild play on the road against the Vancouver Canucks tonight (Dec. 7).
