The Edmonton Oilers snapped their three-game losing streak with a come-from-behind victory against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Rogers Place on Monday (Nov. 10), winning by a score of 5-4 in overtime.
Related: Oilers Come Back to Win 5-4 Over Blue Jackets in OT
Captain Connor McDavid and defenceman Jake Walman each had a pair of goals for the Oilers, while forward Jack Roslovic scored the game-winner in overtime. Columbus got goals from Adam Fantilli, Boone Jenner, Sean Monohan, and Ivan Provorov.
Stuart Skinner picked up the win between the pipes for Edmonton, stopping 15 of the 19 shots he faced. Columbus netminder Jet Greaves made 19 saves in a losing effort.
It was a much-needed victory for the Oilers, who were crushed 9-1 by the Colorado Avalanche at Rogers Place on Saturday (Nov. 8), equalling the record for worst home loss in Edmonton’s NHL history.
With the win, Edmonton improves its record to 7-6-4. Through 17 games, the Oilers have 18 points, tied for second most in the Pacific Division standings.
No Lead Is Safe When Oilers Play
The Oilers never actually held the lead on Monday and faced a multi-goal deficit on multiple occasions. Columbus was leading 4-2 with just over six minutes remaining in regulation, before McDavid scored to cut Edmonton’s deficit to one goal at 13:38.
Hope looked lost for the home team after Roslovic was assessed a high-sticking penalty with just 2:18 remaining, forcing the Oilers to rally with a man in the box. But Edmonton caught an incredible break when the Blue Jackets turned the puck over inside their blue line, and Walman’s centering attempt deflected off the stick of Columbus forward Mathieu Oliver and ended up behind Greaves.
Roslovic then completed the comeback, as the one-time Blue Jacket scored against his former teammate just 56 seconds into sudden death.
This incredible turn of events continued an almost inconceivable trend, which has seen the team that jumps out to a multi-goal lead ultimately end up on the losing end of the result in six of Edmonton’s last 10 games.
Over this stretch, the Oilers have blown two-goal leads and lost to the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Dallas Stars. Meanwhile, they’ve rallied from two-goal deficits to defeat the Montreal Canadiens, Utah Mammoth, and now the Blue Jackets.
In six of Edmonton’s last seven games, either the Oilers or their opponent has taken a multi-goal lead at some point during the game. Only once has that team managed to hang on for victory.
Those numbers could be looked at through a glass-half-empty or half-full perspective. Seen through the latter, the big takeaway from Monday’s result is that the Oilers refused to lose.
McDavid Wills Team to Win
More specifically, it was McDavid who refused to lose. The captain, who reportedly tore into his team after Saturday’s embarrassing performance, simply wasn’t going to be denied on Monday, and summoned all his superhuman ability to save the Oilers from what would have been a devastating defeat.
With the Oilers coming out of the second intermission trailing 3-1 and desperately needing a shot of life, McDavid proceeded to pull a spin-o-rama on Denton Mateychuk, throwing the Blue Jackets defender off balance so badly that he fell to the ice, and then backhanded the puck top shelf behind Greaves just 58 seconds into the third period, scoring what is the early favourite for goal of the season.
McDavid’s second goal wasn’t too shabby either, as he drove to the net with an astonishing burst of speed and tucked the puck past Greaves, picking the Oilers up off the mat and giving them a chance to come back.
“Connor wasn’t going to let us lose tonight,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said following the game. “He was so focused on getting the job done. I’ve seen Connor rise to the occasion and play some tremendous games, and I’m not going to say this was his best game that I’ve seen him play, but under the circumstances it’s got to rate up there, just because he was so determined to get the job done.
“He had an incredible night, two fabulous goals, but there was just so much determination to his game that it was like, ‘it’s not going to happen again tonight’, and he just willed the team to win.”
Frederic Comes Out Swinging
Maybe the biggest critique leveled at the Oilers in the wake of Saturday’s drubbing was their lack of pushback, with much of that focused on struggling forward Trent Frederic.
Frederic was already under fire, having completely failed thus far in the role of heavy that Edmonton is paying him handsomely to play. He then made matters worse on Saturday, when he said the reason that he hadn’t dropped the gloves yet this season is because “when you have one goal in 15 games, no one’s going to fight you.”
Well, they might not fight you when you have one goal in 15 games, but apparently, they’ll throw down when you have one goal in 16 games, because after two days of being blasted from fans and media alike, Frederic came out swinging on Monday: on his first shift, the 6-foot-3 centre squared off with Olivier just inside the Columbus blue line.
It wasn’t just Frederic’s first fight of the season, but it was the first scrap by any Oilers player through the team’s first 17 games of 2025-26.
Olivier (who’d already fought two times previously this season) probably got the better of the tilt, but Frederic’s efforts were very much appreciated by the Rogers Place crowd and his teammates.
“Huge credit to Freddy, taking on (Olivier), trying to give us a little spark, can’t say enough good things about him, that was huge,” McDavid said while speaking to media following the victory. “Not a lot of guys take on (Olivier), so, as I said, huge credit to Freddy.”
Walman Makes History
Walman became the first Oiler to score a game-tying goal while shorthanded in the final minute of regulation. Edmonton’s previous record for latest game-tying shorthanded goal belonged to Andrew Cogliano, who scored to tie the game at 18:33 of the third period against the Anaheim Ducks on Oct. 28, 2007.
The 29-year-old Walman is also just the eighth defenceman in NHL history with a game-tying shorthanded goal in the last minute of the third period. The last defenceman to tie the game with a shorthanded marker in the final 60 seconds was Torey Krug for the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 3, 2021.
The Oilers now head out for a season-long seven-game road trip, which begins at Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday (Nov. 12) against the Philadelphia Flyers.
