The Edmonton Oilers extended their win streak to seven games with a 3-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators at Rogers Place on Saturday (Jan. 6).
Zach Hyman accounted for all of Edmonton’s scoring, notching his third hat trick of the season, while Evan Bouchard assisted on all three goals for the Oilers.
Parker Kelly was the only Senators player to put the puck behind Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner, who stopped 29 of 30 shots to win his fifth consecutive start.
With the victory, Edmonton improved its record to 20-15-1 and moved into the second Wild Card spot in the Western Conference standings. The Oilers, Arizona Coyotes, and Nashville Predators all have 41 points, but Edmonton holds the tiebreaker by virtue of most regulation wins. This is the first time since the start of the season that the Oilers have been in a playoff position.
Red Hot Oilers Keep on Rolling
Edmonton has now won 18 of its last 24 games after starting the season with a dreadful 2-9-1 and is tied for the second-most wins in the NHL over the last eight weeks. The Oilers are 17-6-0 since firing head coach Jay Woodcroft and assistant coach Dave Manson and replacing them with Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey, respectively, on Nov. 12.
The Oilers are not even halfway through their schedule yet and already have winning streaks of eight and now seven games, both coming in the last month and a half. They’ve made a remarkable turnaround, going from 10 points back of a Wild Card spot at U.S. Thanksgiving to where they are now, among the top eight in the Western Conference and climbing.
Oilers Avoid Slip-Up Against Senators
This had all the makings of a classic trap game for Edmonton: The Oilers were coming off a three-day layoff, playing their last game before going out on a road trip and facing a struggling opponent that sat well below them in the standings.
For a while, it looked like the Senators might pull off a big upset. Thanks to some standout goaltending by Anton Forsberg, Ottawa kept the Oilers off the scoreboard for nearly 40 minutes.
But in an example of how Edmonton has matured as a team, the Oilers stuck to their game and didn’t allow themselves to get frustrated. They eventually broke through when Hyman scored a power-play goal on Edmonton’s 33rd shot of the game with 1:52 remaining in the second period.
Hyman scored what proved to be the winning goal at 2:46 of the third period. After Kelly cut Edmonton’s lead to 2-1 with a goal at 15:02, Hyman scored again on the power-play at 17:10.
Historic Performance From Bouchard and Hyman
Saturday’s game was the 649th in franchise history that the Oilers had three goals. In the previous 648, there had never been an instance where one player scored all the goals while another assisted on all of them. It almost didn’t happen on Saturday, either: Bouchard was originally credited with the game’s opening goal, which would have been his 10th of the season before the goal scorer was changed to Hyman.
As it turned out, Bouchard and Hyman did a lot of historic things on Saturday: Hyman recorded his third three-goal game of 2023-24, joining franchise icons Jari Kurri and Wayne Gretzky as the only Oilers with at least three hat tricks in the first 36 games of a season. Bouchard reached 30 assists, joining Coffey and Risto Siltanen as the only defencemen in franchise history with 30 or more assists in the first 36 games of a season.
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This was Edmonton’s first game since voting for the 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend opened last Thursday (Jan. 4), and both Bouchard and Hyman took the opportunity to show fans why they deserve to be at the festivities in Toronto next month.
Hyman now has 25 goals, seven more than the next closest Oilers player, Leon Draisaitl, and tied for fourth most in the NHL. Bouchard now has 39 points, fourth most on the Oilers, and tied for third-most among NHL defencemen. Both players deserve to be at the All-Star Game, although only 12 spots remain to be decided by fan voting, which runs through next Thursday (Jan. 11).
Oilers Get it Done Without Superstars Scoring
Draisaitl doesn’t have quite as strong of a case for a trip to Toronto. The German centre has been to four straight All-Star Games, and he’s at that level of superstardom where no one would even think twice about his presence at the midseason event. But after he went pointless on Saturday, it may be time to start asking if he’s truly deserving of an All-Star selection this year.
While Draisaitl’s numbers are below his standard, the three-time 50-goal scorer and four-time 100-point producer is still having a very good season, ranking second on the Oilers in both goals, with 18, and points, with 42. However, it’s highly debatable that he deserves to be an All-Star before Hyman or maybe even Bouchard.
The other half of Edmonton’s Dynamic Duo, Connor McDavid, also had a quiet night points-wise on Saturday, picking up just one assist. This was already the fifth time in 2023-24 that Edmonton won without either Draisaitl or McDavid scoring, just two fewer than during last season. Last season, Draisaltl and McDavid combined for 116 goals; this season, they’re on pace for just over 70.
But these numbers don’t have to be seen negatively because for the first time in the McDavid/Draisaitl era, the Oilers are proving they can win consistently without the Dynamic Duo having to play like superheroes every night. That bodes well for a long postseason run and is a bit part of why the Oilers have made such a dramatic turnaround this season.
The Oilers will go for their eighth straight victory when they open a three-game road trip with a visit to the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday (Jan. 9).