Oilers Postgame: Downing The Devils

Cory Schneider, Oscar Klefbom

 

Oilers 6, Devils 3

The offence! It’s alive again!

They didn’t blow another lead to a team in the Eastern Conference! Amazing.

The boys in orange and blue put the kibosh on their two game losing skid by knocking off the red hot New Jersey Devils in a game that saw names such as Ryan Strome and Drake Caggulia find much needed relief by putting pucks past Corey Schinder.

Things got started with the aforementioned Caggulia and Strome getting the party started to open up a 2-0 lead but they wouldn’t escape the first without giving up a goal to the guy wearing #9 in white…

Yup. Taylor Hall in his 2nd game back in Edmonton would be Johnny-on-the-spot to cut the Oilers lead to one.

Jesper Bratt making this a 2-2 game led me to groan pretty hard considering that this team had blown two straight leads to Eastern conference teams in the past week, but this team didn’t break in giving up the third goal as Cam Talbot had one of his stronger performances so far this year.

Oscar Klefbom, who’s had a tough start to the year would pick the perfect time to get his first goal of the season blasting a rolling puck past Schneider just a minute after Bratt’s equalizer to restore the Edmonton lead.

Milan Lucic would jump in on the scoring fun with his 2nd goal of the year and also engaged in a roaring game of punch the face with Dalton Prout that brought the fans to their feet.

Just over midway through the 3rd the Devils would forget about Drai as Leon Draisatil on a gorgeous feed from the captain would make it a 5-2 game.

Brian Gibbons would get one back off a tip on a Will Butcher shot but that’s as close as they’d come in the third to getting back into this affair as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins would ice things with an empty netter with just over a minute to go.

Player Of The Game 

I have to go with the captain in the form of Connor McDavid, the kid looked strong all night long setting up goals with three helpers to add to his team leading total of 16 points, but honourable mentions to Klefbom and Matt Benning who had one of his better games of the year.

Other Notes Sponsored By No One That We Know Of Yet

-Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been a joy to watch as he now leads the Oilers in scoring with six goals……hands up if you think he’s traded at the deadline? There’s probably plenty of them.

-I just can’t warm up to the new Devils jerseys, It feels like it’s trying to do too by trying to honour it’s past lives as the Kansas City Scouts and the Colorado Rockies at the same time.

-Rogers Place even on TV still comes across as a library. The building needs some life from the fan base in my one game so far in attendance which came in the loss to Carolina I swear I could hear the coaches coughing on the Oilers bench.

Coming Up

Game five of the five game home stand goes down on Sunday afternoon when the Detroit Red Wings roll into town for their yearly visit in an afternoon affair at 2PM Mountain Time.

 

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