Some nights, hockey gives you everything. Thursday night at Rogers Place was one of those nights.
The Edmonton Oilers demolished the Seattle Kraken 9-4 in their second straight win over the visiting team. Nine goals. Connor McDavid with a hat trick. Leon Draisaitl with four points. Matthew Savoie scored twice. “We want 10!” chants ringing through the arena with ten minutes still left to play. If not for Andrew Mangiapane hitting both posts on what looked like a certain goal, they might have gotten there. They haven’t scored ten since 1996 but they came awfully close.
“Right from the start I thought we were ready to play,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said afterward. “I thought there was a lot of jump, all lines contributing.”
Safe to say, Edmonton needed this. After getting blown out 8-3 by Dallas and 9-1 by Colorado in recent weeks, after knowing what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a lop-sided home game, the Oilers finally got to hand one out themselves. Eight goals from the top six. The power play was buzzing. The confidence flowed.
McDavid’s hat trick was his 13th regular-season career hat trick, tying Mark Messier for fourth in Oilers history. He opened the scoring 7:17 into the first period with a snipe underneath the blocker. He made it 5-2 in the second when he snuck a shot under a frozen Joey Daccord. He completed it in the third on the power play, finding a wide-open net after a Ryan Nugent-Hopkins shot went wide. Three goals, one assist, four points. Exactly what the Oilers need from their captain when they need it most.
“I thought I passed a couple away the other night,” McDavid admitted. “It ultimately cost us, losing a 1-0 game. Who knows if I score on one of those, so I thought about shooting a little bit more. It was nice to score some goals and feel good about ourselves.”
“We Want 10!”: Oilers Almost Score Double Digits In Offensive Outbreak vs Kraken
McDavid’s hat trick fueled a nine-goal explosion for the Edmonton Oilers against the Kraken on Thursday. The Oilers narrowly missed a historic double-digit performance.
That’s the best player in the world adjusting his game, listening to what the team needs, and delivering. When McDavid shoots more, everything opens up.
“He’s one of the best in the league for a reason,” Evan Bouchard said. “When he says he’s going to shoot the puck, you kind of have to play it differently. But when you do play it too differently, he’s going to pass it, so it’s kind of hard to defend.”
Draisaitl’s four-point night continued his march toward another monster season. His 16th goal. Three assists. A power-play marker that took just seven seconds after the faceoff. When this power play is working together, when Nugent-Hopkins is feeding them perfect passes, when Bouchard is quarterbacking from the point, this is what the Oilers look like. This is the offence that went to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals.
Oilers vs Kraken: Pre-game Stats
11-11-5 | 27 PTS
Savoie got two goals, including a gorgeous shorthanded breakaway in the second period. After missing on his first breakaway attempt in the first, he went to the backhand on the second and buried it.
“I had a lot of time in intermission to think about it,” he said. “I had some ideas, and it was Stu (Skinner) who mentioned to maybe go backhand, just something he saw, so credit to Stuey.”
That’s young players growing into their roles. That’s Stuart Skinner helping his teammates from the bench. Small moments and all that.
Zach Hyman added a beauty, going backhand-shelf on a breakaway. Mattias Janmark capitalized on a third-period turnover. Vasily Podkolzin’s shot squeaked through Daccord just 17 seconds after McDavid opened the scoring. Goals came from everywhere. Joey Daccord allowed five on 14 shots before being pulled. Philipp Grubauer didn’t fare much better.
“Myself More Than Anybody”: McDavid And Oilers’ Talk Offensive Instincts
McDavid acknowledged passing up prime scoring chances on Tuesday. Are his and the Oilers’ offensive instincts worth addressing?
“Nice to see the guys being rewarded with some offense,” Knoblauch said. “I think overall the past couple of weeks they’ve been playing hard and the defensive game has been getting a lot better.”
Calvin Pickard made 28 saves in net. Not spectacular numbers given the four goals against, but solid enough when your team hangs nine on the board. The result matters more than the aesthetics.
Seattle’s been struggling, sure. They’ve lost four straight now and sit at 11-8-6. But that’s not the point. The point is that Edmonton needed to do exactly what they did: win decisively at home, get contributions throughout the lineup, remember what it feels like to dominate a game from start to finish. After the slow start to this season, after the questions about structure and effort and whether last year’s magic was gone, the Oilers showed exactly who they can be.
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The power play was lethal, scoring four times. When asked about it, Bouchard simply said, “Things are clicking for us right now.” That’s the understatement of the week.
This was Edmonton’s second straight win over Seattle after beating them 4-0 on Saturday. They’ve outscored the Kraken 13-4 across two games. The Oilers improve to 12-11-5 and continue a five-game homestand, with a total of seven of their next eight games at home. If they can build off this momentum, if they can keep finding their structure and confidence, the slow start becomes a distant memory.
McDavid has 14 goals now. Draisaitl has 16. Savoie is shaping up to be the young star we all knew he could be. The defence was solid. The special teams: spectacular.
What more could you want?
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