Connor McDavid Cleans Up Islanders In Overtime

I had a bad feeling in my gut about this one. See, the Oilers did really well against New Jersey on Friday night. Well enough to score a six pack. They let all the air out of their tires on Sunday when they failed to register a goal in a 4-0 loss to the Red Wings. Now, they’re headed on the road for four games.

They’re in trouble. A 4-8-1 club can’t come home 4-12-1 or something similar and expect to have any reasonable shot at the playoffs.

Leon Draisaitl scored the game’s first goal, and Connor McDavid scored the game’s last goal in overtime to get the Oilers out of Brooklyn with two points. To the bulletpoints.

• Leon Draisaitl got the party started when Brock Nelson coughed up the puck at the Oiler blue. The puck sailed into the Oiler zone, where Draisaitl fired it behind Islanders goalie Thomas Greiss. The Oilers had a 1-0 lead just a couple minutes into the second.

• Jordan Eberle had the equalizer for the Islanders on a nice little drop pass from (guess who?) Mathew Barzal. It would be the only goal that would beat Cam Talbot this evening. And it was a beauty.

• The penalty kill? Not a disaster. The Islanders went 0/3 on the night. No power play goals for the Oilers, but I’d take what I could get at this point.
• Two goals doesn’t do anything for this club’s goals per game. They’ll enter Thursday’s game still dry in the goals scored department, but hey, a win’s a win.
• PAY THAT MAN HIS MONEY - Connor McDavid is Edmonton. The deciding goal belongs to the 20 year old phenom, and it almost looked like it wasn’t about to happen.

• I’ll take a 2-1 win any damn day of the week. Maybe we’ll start to see some other players score some goals along the way.
• The Oilers skate away with a 2-1 win, but a huge amount of credit needs to go to Cam Talbot for turning aside 36 of 37 shots. Oilers are going to need a whole lot more of that from Talbot’s end of the ice if they’re going to climb back from the Pacific Division’s lower half.
• Shots ended 37-25 in favour of the Islanders. That’s a lot of pressure on the Oilers. If you’ve got a game that ends something wacky like 5-1 for the Oilers and the shots look like that, it’s likely score effects taking over. But the Islanders are putting the screws to the Islanders if that’s a tie game until the very end. The Oilers had exactly two shots in the third period of this one. Talbot was on clean-up the entire time.

Oilers look to make it two in a row with a visit to New Jersey on Thursday night. Two in a row is a streak, y’know.