A marathon road trip continued for the Edmonton Oilers last night, as they headed to Carolina to take on the Hurricanes. There’s been both positives and negatives through two contests on this roadie. For one positive, the Oilers may have found a solid linemate for when joining Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the first line. For two, goaltender Stuart Skinner kicked off the road trip by stopping 20 of 21 pucks thrown his way (apart from ones rolled back due to offside). And also, the Oilers would finally get Zach Hyman back against Carolina.
There have also been drawbacks, though. The inability for a forward outside of the top line, and not named Jack Roslovic or Vasily Podkolzin, to score remains an issue. The Edmonton defence continues to be plagued by gaffes and errors. And living and dying by one-goal games isn’t a sustainable path to success.
On this night, it would be a familiar problem returning to the surface for the Oilers. Their inability to hold a two-goal lead reared its ugly head once more, as despite starting off with a quick 2–0 lead, that was all the offence Edmonton could muster until halfway through the third period. The ‘Canes, meanwhile, countered with oodles of offensive-zone time and capitalizing on (more) mistakes by Edmonton defencemen. This game was lucky to be tied 2–2 after two periods, never mind get to overtime.
Yes, vertime again. Draisaitl was sick of it too, thankfully, and ended it after just 19 seconds. Oilers come away, somewhat fortunately, with a 4–3 OT win. Here’s the game story.
Hyman returns and immediately makes his presence felt
The City of Edmonton is not complete without the luscious River Valley. Summers (and to an extent winters) here are not complete without road construction, as was pointed out on social media last night. And the Edmonton Oilers are not complete without Zachary Martin Hyman.
The Oilers have lacked requisite tenacity and scoring “oomph” quite a bit this season. And it’s safe to say a decent, if not large, chunk of that has been due to Hyman’s injury absence. Getting him back is a major lift to a team that has just barely treaded water without him. However, the concern was seeing if there would be any rust on Hyman’s game, after missing the first month-and-change.
To the relief of the entire fanbase, there was very little rust at all. This was full-value Zach Hyman, and in the ways the Oilers needed it most. Not only did he register a key secondary assist by serving as the link between good Evan Bouchard defence (!) and the offensive-zone McDavid-Draisaitl duo, but his playoff mission carried over into this contest. Hyman, unlike several Oilers this season, was hitting anything that moved near him and wore a red sweater.
Physicality has not been provided nearly enough by the Oilers this season. Trent Frederic, for all the cajones it took to dance with reigning heavyweight champion Mathieu Olivier, continues to lag behind expectations. Hyman will score in ways he always does; that’s a given. If he continues to lay the body on at every chance given, it’ll lend itself to creating said offensive opportunities.
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The curse of leading by two goals for the 2025–26 Edmonton Oilers
The Oilers have finally scored four goals in consecutive games. This is not a drill. Three times in the last four games they have gotten to that benchmark, after spending the majority of the first month of the NHL season sputtering. One major jinx still remains, however. This team is still inept at making two-goal leads difficult to overcome for the opponent.
The Oilers weren’t meant to consistently win regularseason games 2–1, and if they were, this defence has a long way to go to meet that goal. These were the two goals that the Hurricanes would score, to pull even. Though the shots on goal say what they say in each, they’re underselling how long Carolina controlled puck possession for. They also had so many good opportunities that didn’t count for shots on goal.
Either Edmonton has to stop going into defensive shells, or they have to be a lot better defensively still. Luke Gazdic, on the Hockey Night in Canada intermission panel, read a stat that this is the 10th game this season the Oilers have had a two-goal lead. Six of those have seen the lead vanish, and this avoided becoming the fifth game to end in a loss. That tide has to be stemmed at some point.
A familiar refrain: OVERTIME?!
This could have been avoided. That aforementioned goal that Hyman got an assist on? That came in the third period, and briefly gave Edmonton a 3–2 lead. It would have been the post poetic outcome for that to have been the game-winner.
Alas, not even a full minute later, William Carrier came in for Carolina with a hard drive up the wall, and power-move to the net. Skinner made the stop on that play, and the rebound went out to… Okay, who was supposed to be covering Jordan Staal?
Staal wasn’t done evading the scrutiny of the Oilers defence corps. He would have two really good looks later on in the period, and not get a good shot off on either of them. He was in the slot area both times. Therein lies a major flaw of this defence: at the worst possible times, they tend to forget a player exists, or give too much respect to a wiley veteran. Situational awareness needs to improve for this group of defencemen in orange and blue. It still wasn’t good enough on this night.
Stuart Skinner has bounced back massively in his past two starts
This section will be prefaced with one brief admission: yes, on the second goal especially, Skinner’s lateral movement still needs some refining. If this were an Oilers loss, his positioning would be scrutinized a lot more.
That said, Skinner continued to have some good mojo on this night. That big save in overtime against Columbus last Monday seems to have sparked some confidence for Skinner. Since then, he made 20 saves against Philadelphia for the win, and in this game, was a major reason the Oilers escaped Period two with a 2–2 score. The Hurricanes had free reign in the Oilers zone multiple times in this one. Yet, Skinner had the answer every time he needed to.
Skinner stopped 33 of 36 shots on this night, for a .917 save percentage. In doing so, he’s passed Cam Talbot for fifth-most goaltending wins in Oilers franchise history. He’s followed up his two worst starts of the season with two big reasons the Oilers notched OT victories. Somebody make sure this Stu stays on the stove-top burner. The Oilers need a hot goalie right now, and Skinner has the chance to make a statement that he’s the guy.
Player perspective
“We get our chances, they get theirs; lot of momentum shifts in periods, we were able to fight them off. A lot of credit goes to our penalty kill, especially after (Carolina) got a couple in a row.” -Stu Skinner
Big game in Buffalo on Monday?
This Eastern Conference crusade carries on to Buffalo now for a Monday night tilt against the reeling Sabres. On the surface, this is a winnable game against perennial also-rans that the Oilers should handle. However, these Oilers have already lost games to the lowly Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues this season. This Buffalo matchup has all the potential to become a trap game, which makes it even more important to win.
The Oilers cannot throw away more points against teams likely to be out of the playoff race by March. So march on to Buffalo they shall, and try to avoid suffering another letdown. Sportsnet telecast this time, unlike last Monday, with another 5:00 p.m. MT start.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
