By The Numbers: McDavid heating up as Oilers surge
Published
Connor McDavid is heating up, and the Edmonton Oilers are surging alongside him.
The Oilers captain posted a goal and two assists in Tuesday's 5-4 shootout win over the Vegas Golden Knights, extending his point streak to five games. McDavid is also on a three-game multi-point streak, leading the Oilers to three straight wins as Edmonton looks to crawl back up the standings from a disastrous start.
The Oilers secured two points on Tuesday despite the Golden Knights erasing a two-goal deficit in the final seven minutes of the third period to force overtime. McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored in the shootout to secure the victory.
“We’ll take wins any way we can get them at this point,” McDavid said. “Obviously it would be nice to close it out up two with five minutes to go - you expect to close that out - but we will take the win any way we can.
“Definitely there is momentum in our room. I think we can feel it. I think what we have seen out of our last three [games] and it is something to build off of.”
With two goals and 12 points during the Oilers' current win streak, McDavid has surged to ninth in the NHL scoring race, tied with teammate Leon Draisaitl and Colorado Avalanche centre Nathan MacKinnon.
After his historic campaign last year in which he won both the Rocket Richard and Art Ross Trophies, McDavid has eight goals and 28 points in 19 games this season. Having missed time with an upper-body injury last month, McDavid is seventh in points per game this season at 1.47 - still well off his 1.87 mark last season.
Prior to his current run, McDavid failed to top two points in any game this season. He's had three points or more in each of the past three games.
McDavid, who has led the league in points in each of the past three years, is nine points back of Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov for the lead this season. The Oilers have one game in-hand on the Lightning as an added boost for the three-time reigning scoring champion.
Oilers making up ground in the West
The Oilers, who fired head coach Jay Woodcroft after a 3-9-1 start, now sit at 8-12-1 - five points back of the Nashville Predators for the final wild-card spot.
Edmonton improved to 5-3-0 under Kris Knoblauch on Tuesday, a win the new coach believes proved the team's mindset has changed.
“I thought we played pretty well,” Knoblauch said. “The last five minutes were pretty chaotic, and I won’t say we made mistakes, but we gave them opportunities. I thought we were in pretty good control up 4-2, but overall the first 15 minutes of the third period were pretty good. We had a lot of opportunities to put it away - on the power play, some 5-on-5 chances, but we didn’t and it took us an extra five minutes and a shootout.
"Guys were positive on the bench. It was, 'Don't worry about it, we're still going to get the two points. Let's continue to play hockey.' I don't think we would have heard that when I first got here, but they still believed in it, and it was nice."
The Oilers will visit the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday before enjoying a six-day break in the schedule. Things will then heat up for Edmonton, with nine games in the span of 16 days leading into the holiday break.