The Edmonton Oilers will look to extend their winning streak to four games when they return home to face the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday night.
Leon Draisaitl and Brett Kulak provided the Edmonton offense as the Oilers edged the host Seattle Kraken 2-1 on Saturday night. With the win, Edmonton, second in the Pacific Division, improved to 6-3-1 in its past 10 games.
The Oilers are 19-8-2 on home ice this season.
Stuart Skinner made 24 saves on Saturday for his third consecutive victory. The Edmonton goaltender has a .949 save percentage during the streak.
“You look at the play of (Skinner) the last three games — he’s been outstanding,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “We’ve been tightening up a little bit defensively, but the biggest thing is the goaltending has been outstanding. He’s been making big saves. The goal-scoring hasn’t been quite there that we would like — just haven’t been able to find the net as often, but I think that’ll come eventually.”
Calvin Pickard, 7-3-0 in 11 games this season with a 2.53 GAA and a .905 save percentage, is expected to start on Sunday.
Pickard is 2-1-1 with a 2.91 GAA and a .918 save percentage in five career appearances against the Penguins.
Oilers captain Connor McDavid had an assist in Saturday’s win to extend his point streak to 10 games (one goal, 23 assists), while Zach Hyman, who leads the team with 40 goals, has eight in his past seven games.
Sunday will mark the first of two meetings between the Oilers and Penguins in a week. The teams will conclude the season series March 10 in Pittsburgh.
The Penguins will head to Edmonton after squandering a 3-1 third-period lead and losing 4-3 to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.
“We beat ourselves. We just beat ourselves in a number of different ways,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “We had complete control of the game, played a really good game up until that point, and we just made some egregious mistakes, and it’s hard to recover from.”
Pittsburgh has lost back-to-back games after having its three-game winning streak snapped in a 2-0 loss to Seattle on Thursday.
Sunday will conclude a four-game western trip for Pittsburgh. The Penguins are 1-2-0 on the trip and 12-13-4 on the road this season.
“We’ve got to keep fighting. We missed an opportunity (on Saturday),” Sullivan said. “I’m sure nobody feels good about it right now, none of us do, but we’ve got to find a way to get up tomorrow morning, re-energize, re-invest and get ready for the next one.
“That’s the nature of the game, especially at this time of the year. We’re going to play a lot of hockey, we’ve got a lot of games in front of us — we’ve got a lot of opportunities, and that’s how we have to look at it.”
Captain Sidney Crosby, who has team-leading totals of 32 goals and 63 points, has a goal and seven assists in his past five games. Lars Eller has two goals and an assist in his past three games.
Goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic is 9-4-4 with a 2.67 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage in 19 games this season.
In two career appearances against the Oilers, Nedeljkovic is 1-1-0 with a .914 save percentage and a 2.63 GAA.
–Field Level Media