‘We’re cleaning it up’: Oilers feel back on track after gritty, hard fought win over Stars

This, Oilers fans, has got to be the formula. 

It can not simply be about Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the same line from start to finish, piling up the points and carrying the team to another Art Ross or Hart Trophy. Not when the games get hard, and opponents are throwing four good lines over the boards that can all chip in. 

It has to come down to more than one line and more than two guys, and that’s how it fleshed out on a gritty, hard fought Wednesday night in Dallas, as Edmonton won 6-3 in a game where neither McDavid nor Draisaitl had a point until 48 minutes had been played. 

“A great team win,” declared Zach Hyman, who scored his 15th with his Dad in attendance, as the fathers tagged along to see Edmonton nab three points on this two-game road trip. “(Dallas is) a real team. They’re really good. There’s not much space out there. 

“We just we played tight, we didn’t give them much and then … Leon made a great play to Fogey (Warren Foegele) and he buried it. Then Connor’s goal gave us a little cushion.” 

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With Draisaitl and McDavid separated for the first time in weeks, the best Oilers line in this game belonged to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who found himself between Mattias Janmark and — for the first time this season — Klim Kostin. 

Kostin set up Janmark for a goal and Nugent-Hopkins sniped one of his own before he assisted on Hyman’s powerplay goal. Nugent-Hopkins now has 18 goals this season, but it was mostly his line that was responsible for this handsome stat: 

The Oilers have answered the last six straight opposition goals in regulation with a goal of their own. Sure, you want a lead every night. But hanging around isn’t a bad thing either. 

“As much as people want us to play towards a script,” said head coach Jay Woodcroft, “sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. What I liked was, when the other team did something, we found a way to score a goal. We responded.” 

The American Airlines Center has been a dying ground for these Oilers, and this year the home team is one of the NHL’s elite outfits. They played a hard game in which all the little battles added up Wednesday, the kind of game that you will never win if you are not entirely engaged up and down your lineup. 

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The Oilers got strong play from their defence, excellent goaltending from their no-doubt No. 1 Stu Skinner, and contributions from all four lines. So, locked in a 3-3 game with 12 minutes to play, all that was left to happen was for the two big boys to step up. 

As if on cue, Draisaitl picked off an errant Miro Heiskanen clearing pass and fed linemate Warren Foegele for a tidy one-timer that made it 4-3 with 11:46 to play. Then, four-and-a-half minutes later, McDavid shot off a two-on-one with Hyman and put the game away with the 5-3 goal. 

It was McDavid’s first (and only) shot on net of the evening, and extended the longest active NHL scoring streak to 14 games. 

McDavid now has 29 goals and 65 points in just 34 games, the first time an NHL player has scaled the 65-point plateau pre-Christmas since the 1995-96 season. 

After a sometimes sloppy three-game losing streak, a win in the Big D was a tonic. This thing, at least for a night, is right back on the rails. 

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“We’re cleaning it up,” Hyman said. “We gave away a couple games there, gave away points in games that we should have won, so it’s a big learning lesson, right? 

“I think we have a really good team. And we’re better than our record shows,” he continued. “It’s just little mistakes. But I think today was a big step against a really good team. 

“You need to stop it and to do it against a really good team in their building. This is a tough place to play and it’s not easy. So it’s a big one.” 

Janmark capped the game with an empty netter, his second of the game. A depth player who was brought in for some Bottom 6 stability has, through injury, found himself playing out of his element. 

“I never try to evaluate my game on points,” he said, “because they can come and go. Sometimes you make a great play, sometimes they just don’t bounce your way. I try to stick with it as long as you play good. But eventually you need to contribute with something.” 

Eventually you have to play like a team. A real team. 

Lo and behold, the Oilers can do that when they need to. 

More from Sportsnet

McDavid’s point streak hits 14 games as Oilers double up Stars

Oilers GM Holland staying cool despite taking serious social-media heat for team’s play

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