- Connor McDavid led his Edmonton Oilers to a win over Chicago Blackhawks last night, 6-3.
- Pittsburgh Penguins leveled the result in series against the Montreal Canadiens, with a 3-1 win.
- Earlier yesterday, Calgary Flames lost to Winnipeg Jets, 2-3.
McDavid’s Burst Leads the Oilers Past Blackhawks
For the first time in his career, Edmonton’s center scored a playoff hat-trick. His contribution turned out to be a difference between the two sides in this contest.
McDavid netted twice in the opening four minutes, knocking out the rivals from Chicago. The first score was after just 19 seconds on the ice, and that was a morale killer for the Blackhawks. Yet, that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to them. Jeremy Colliton‘s crew just began recovering from the initial shock when another arrived.
With 4:05 since the start of the match, McDavid once again hit the back of the net, ditching two opponents, beating Corey Crawford.
“You never plan to score on the first shift, but we wanted to have a good start and make sure we were in their zone, and we found a way to get one, and that was good,” McDavid said.
We need to add that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was an assistant to both of these goals and that he had one more until the end of the match.
Patrick Kane cut the lead at 9:06, but Tyler Ennis used Blackhawks’ another slow start of the period to score. It was after 1:44 of the second.
Chicago came back, with Slater Koekkoek and Olli Maatta scoring, yet dropping the momentum in the late part of the second when McDavid netter during a powerplay. Midway through the third, James Neal and Alex Chiasson sealed Chicago’s fate.
Game 3 of this matchup is on Wednesday at 10:30 pm ET.
Canadiens’ Lose Game 2 Against Penguins
The second meeting of these two sides was hard and tough, and we have to say that the Penguins fully deserved to win. They were controlling the game right from the start, and if it weren’t for Carey Price who recorded 35 saves, Montreal’s defeat would’ve been much higher.
The Canadiens opened the game very slow, allowing Sidney Crosby to score after 4:25, with the Penguins getting a massive edge, which later turned out to be decisive.
Montreal’s players were very nervous, with seven minor penalties over the opening two frames.
Jason Zuker scored with 5:19 to go, but Jesperi Kotkaniemi cut the deficit with 2:10 giving some hope to Montreal. Claude Julien pulled out his goalie, adding an extra attacker, but this risky move didn’t bring anything good. Furthermore, the Penguins scored 10 seconds before the end, when Jake Guentzel added one goal to his tally, using the empty-net situation.
“Well, we knew [the Penguins] were going to come out hard, being down by a game,” Price said. “They executed that well and played a very solid 40 minutes. I thought things went well for them, and then I thought we responded fairly well in the third period, but they had gathered a lot of momentum by then.”
The next meeting is on Wednesday at 8 pm ET.
Earlier yesterday, Calgary Flames lost to Winnipeg Jets, 3-2, and the score in that series is also tied, 1-1.
