Leon Draisaitl had a hat trick as the red-hot Edmonton Oilers defeated the Calgary Flames by a score of 5-1 at Rogers Place on Tuesday (Dec. 23).
Forwards Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman also scored for the Oilers, who won for the eighth time in their last 11 games. Calgary got its lone goal from defenceman Mackenzie Weegar. The Oilers went three-for-six on the power play, while killing all four of Calgary’s opportunities with the man advantage.
Related: Oilers’ Power Play Explodes in Dominant 5-1 Victory Over Flames
New Oilers netminder Connor Ingram was beaten just once on 19 shots. Calgary goalie Dustin Wolf made 34 saves as the Oilers set their season-high with 39 shots on goal.
Edmonton now has a record of 19-13-6 for 44 points, tied for most in the Pacific Division with both the Anaheim Ducks and Vegas Golden Knights.
McDavid Continues Incredible Run
While he didn’t score, Oilers captain Connor McDavid assisted on all five of Edmonton’s goals, continuing his remarkable run of play this month.
The 28-year-old centre has 12 goals and 19 assists in the last 11 games. He’s one of only 13 players in NHL history to amass more than 30 points over a stretch of 11 games in a single season.
McDavid’s offensive outburst has propelled him to the top of the Art Ross Trophy race. He now has 67 points this season, six more than the next closest player, Colorado Avalanche centre Nathan MacKinnon. Not since Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux in 1995-96 has an NHL player totalled more than 66 points before Christmas.
Oilers’ Production Has Been Top Heavy
McDavid isn’t Edmonton’s only star player that has stepped up as the Oilers have gone 8-2-1 since Dec. 3. Over the last 11 games, Draisaitl has 24 points, Hyman has 15 points, and Nugent-Hopkins and blueliner Evan Bouchard each have 13 points. But after that, no Oilers player has totalled more than six points and only two have more than five points during the 8-3-1 stretch.
This top-heavy trend was most pronounced on Tuesday, when the aforementioned five skaters were the only Oilers to record a point, despite Edmonton scoring five times.
The difference between Edmonton’s early season struggles and recent surge has been the play of its stars. If the Oilers are going to sustain their current success for the rest of the season and into the playoffs, they will need the supporting cast to start contributing more again.
Ingram Steady Between the Pipes
After backstopping Edmonton to a 4-3 victory over Vegas at Rogers Place on Sunday (Dec. 21) in his Oilers debut, Ingram delivered another steady performance between the pipes on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old netminder, who Edmonton acquired in an October trade with the Utah Mammoth, is now 2-0 with a 2.00 goals-against average (GAA) and .920 save percentage (SV%) in two starts for the Oilers.
After Oilers goalie Tristan Jarry was injured last week, Ingram was recalled from the Bakersfield Condors of the American Hockey League (AHL), joining fellow veteran netminder Calvin Pickard as Edmonton’s two active goaltenders.
No one really knew quite what to expect from Ingram, who struggled in the AHL this season and hadn’t played in the NHL since February, but the former Mammoth netminder has looked right at home in Edmonton’s net. He stops the shots he’s supposed to stop and doesn’t do anything to make his job more difficult than it should be.
While it’s a small sample size, Ingram’s play has been impressive enough to spark speculation about whether he might supplant Pickard and remain in Edmonton once Jarry returns from injury.
Battle of Alberta Reignited
The teams combined for 154 penalty minutes on Tuesday, with the Flames racking up 89 while the Oilers were assessed 65. It was the most penalty minutes in an NHL game this season, and the two highest single-game totals for a team in 2025-26.
There was bad blood between the provincial rivals right from the opening faceoff, continuing through the second period when Oilers forward Trent Frederic and Calgary defenceman Kevin Bahl fought each other. That was before things got particularly heated in the final moments of the game when a scrum broke out, resulting in all 10 skaters on the ice receiving misconducts.
It was a bit of a throwback to the old days of the Battle of Alberta, when games between the province’s two NHL teams would almost always end in fisticuffs. As luck would have it, these teams will meet again in their first game back from the holiday break, when the Flames host the Oilers at Scotiabank Saddledome on Saturday (Dec. 27) night.
