Edmonton center Connor McDavid will carry a 17-game point streak, tied for the longest in a single season of his career, into the Oilers’ Saturday night home game against the Winnipeg Jets.
McDavid had his eighth career five-point game in a 7-2 road victory over the Seattle Kraken on Friday in the front end of the back-to-back, scoring his league-leading 32nd goal of the season to go with four assists. He leads the NHL with 72 points, 15 more than the total of teammate Leon Draisaitl, who is second in the league.
Draisaitl didn’t play against the Kraken because of an undisclosed injury, but it didn’t slow the Oilers, who scored three goals in the first 3:55 while building a 4-0 first-period lead. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had four assists and Zach Hyman and Klim Kostin each had two goals for Edmonton, which led 6-1 midway through the second period and cruised home.
The Oilers moved into third place in the Pacific Division with the victory.
“Really important (win),” McDavid said. “Obviously we’re missing the big boy (Draisaitl) there. A big team win for us in a tough environment. Really, really big win against a divisional team.”
Edmonton has a two-game winning streak and has won three of its past four.
“Right now, we’re on taking care of business on a day-to-day basis,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “I just think that’s where we’re at in our schedule. That’s where we’re at with where the standings are. We’ve got to make sure that we’re focused and paying attention to us and our game every single day. We have (13) games left before the All-Star break. That’s a (large) segment of a season.”
Winnipeg, which is in second place in the Central Division, five points behind the Dallas Stars, comes in off a 4-2 victory over the visiting Vancouver Canucks on Thursday.
Mark Scheifele led the way with his second hat trick of the season and the seventh of his career. Pierre-Luc Dubois scored on a penalty shot for the Jets, who will be ending a stretch of 16 games in 30 days.
The Canucks held a 1-0 lead until Scheifele tied it with a power-play goal at the 13:52 mark of the second period. Dubois and Scheifele each scored again before the end of the period to make the score 3-1.
“We started skating again,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “I think that early goal kind of set us on our heels a little bit.”
Vancouver’s Conor Garland cut the gap to 3-2 in the third period before Scheifele sealed the win on an empty-netter with 28 seconds remaining to complete the hat trick.
Scheifele, who has 23 goals this season, had been fighting a virus heading into the game.
“Just battle through it, try to get through the game and then try to rest as much as you can,” Scheifele said. “I try to do as much as I can to make sure my body’s primed for every game. You’ve kind of just got to grind through it, that’s the name of the game.”
Jets defenseman Josh Morrissey, who had two assists on Thursday to give him 36 in 36 games, left the win in the third period due to a injury sustained on a hit by Tyler Myers.
“There’s a little bit of a lower-body injury,” Bowness said. “He didn’t come back. … We’re hopeful that he’ll play Saturday.”
–Field Level Media