The Edmonton Oilers defeated Nashville Predators tonight with 8-3, posting their second win in a row since the start of March. The guests from Canada scored five goals in a little bit more than five minutes of the last period, knocking out the Predators in a way they couldn’t imagine.
“We got punched in the face today, pretty good, and certainly got what we deserved,” said John Hynes, Nashville’s head coach.
The guys who delivered that punch was Leon Draisaitl. The 24-year scored four goals, posting five points. He netted three times in the last frame, sealing the win for his team.
“I don’t need to beat around the bush. When you score four goals, you feel good,” Draisaitl said. “You feel good. You feel good about yourself. You feel good about your linemate.”
For the moment, he is the NHL-leading figure in the points category, with 107, 43 goals and 64 assists. It is already two points more than he had the previous season when setting the personal best.
The Oilers had a 2-0 lead after the first period. Josh Archibald scored with 6:23 into the first period, after Tyler Ennis’ assist. Draisaitl doubled the lead with 30 seconds left in the period.
Hosts made a comeback in the second. Roman Josi was accurate with a one-timer at 2:14 inside the period, and just 14 seconds later, we saw a tie, when Calle Jarnkrok netted following Matt Duchene.
Edmonton replied through Lailer Yamamoto, at 13:34, but Nick Bonino tied it at 3-3 91 seconds later.
It was Connor McDavid who scored a tiebreaker at 4:42 in the final period. He posted five points also, and with this goal added four assists.
“We had a good first period, and then we kind of blow it in the second,” McDavid said. “I thought we did a good job of rebounding, obviously.”
Draisaitl raised to 5-3, Zack Kassian posted one for 6-3, and until the end of the game, Draisaitl added two more. This was the second five-point game for the Oilers’ forward, while on the other side, McDavid has five of them. The duo was unstoppable for the Predators, who simply weren’t able to do anything in the third period.
Coach Hynes admitted that his team didn’t have any solution on how to stope the guests, especially these two guys, saying that if Predators continue to play like this, results similar to this tonight’s will be usual.
If we show up to play like we played tonight, then that’s lots of times what the result is going to be this time of year.” he said.
Nashville (32-35-8) recorded the second defeat in a row, following three wins. In just one game during this stretch, they’ve allowed fewer than three goals. Up next, they visit Minnesota Wild, for a second of back-to-back nights. After that, the Predators play against Dallas Stars twice in a row. The first game in Tennessee, and the latter in Texas. As for the Oilers (35-23-8), Tippett’s crew visits the above-mentioned Stars already tonight, and jumps to Chicago for the following game. After those two contests, they have a four-game homestand coming up
