TEMPE, Ariz. — It was one of those periods. The kind you’ll probably only remember if you don’t win it.
The Edmonton Oilers were in Tempe, playing in front of a home crowd of travelling Oiler fans against an Arizona Coyotes team that was winless in nine games — and had lost less than 24 hours earlier in Colorado. But somehow, Edmonton found itself trailing 3-2 after 40 minutes, with another brutal second period in its resume.
Now, the 6-3 Oilers win that ensued is something we’ll all assume was supposed to happen. Good team versus not-as-good team, right?
But in reality, with a host of players not producing, a Vegas win at San Jose, and the fact the Oilers hadn’t won two straight since before the All-Star break, the third period that Edmonton delivered was as comforting as it was clutch.
“When things aren’t going our way, or we don’t have our best game going, it’s just about staying composed and not panicking,” said Evander Kane, who scored his 20th and 21st goals in the final frame. “Knowing that if we hang around long enough and get our game in order, we can pull it out.”
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An Arizona team that took the game away from Edmonton in the middle frame — a disturbing trend for the Oilers, who have lost their last four middle periods — got steamrolled in the final 20 as Edmonton emerged from its locker room with new line combinations and an entirely upgraded pace of play.
Head coach Kris Knoblauch went back to his old Top 6 — Connor McDavid between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman, and Leon Draisaitl with Ryan McLeod and Kane — and those units created three goals plus an empty-netter in a 4-0 third period for Edmonton.
The final: 6-3 Oilers, and a 2-1 road trip heading home for five straight at Rogers Place.
“You can tell that you’re playing a young, fragile team that’s been on a losing streak and feeling very tight. Our group, we just took advantage of it,” said Knoblauch, who has become the master at pressing the right buttons when it comes to in-game line manipulations.
“Usually you’re thinking about what’s worked in the past, and who’s playing well at that moment,” he said. “It’s good for the coach to be prepared, but also, it’s not a good sign for coaches to be too prepared and have a backup lineup. You don’t want to get in the habit of changing things up (every game).
“But after the second period — we got outplayed, we were slow to pucks and they really carried the play in the second — we just needed a little something to change things up.”
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What resulted was a wake-up call for a couple of moribund Oilers, after Mattias Janmark had already notched his first goal since Nov. 28 in Period 1. After the lines emerged from the blender, Ryan McLeod found his first point in 10 games, while Warren Foegele scored his first goal/point in nine games.
With ice-cold Connor Brown spending his first game in the press box as a healthy scratch, it was high time the Edmonton depth forwards started pitching in again. And so they did.
“We went back to playing simple and playing faster, instead of sitting around watching the play all night,” McLeod said. “In the third we played on our toes a little more, and it paid off.”
With two more goals Kane is quietly on pace for 30 goals and 50 points; pretty good production for a player earning $5.125 million. He’s found comfort on the left side of either McDavid or Draisaitl, and gets his tucks with very little power-play time (five PP points all season).
Plus, he leads the team in hits, and is tied for ninth in the NHL with Brady Tkachuk.
“Both units have played together for long stretches during the season,” Kane said after the win. “So it was nothing really new for us. But it gave us a bit of a spark and paid off.”
Edmonton has now won six straight meetings against the Coyotes since their last loss on Feb. 4, 2020, and this season Edmonton hasn’t lost a one-goal game (9-0) since Nov. 9 in San Jose, the penultimate game of Jay Woodcroft’s coaching tenure.
“We talked about that,” Knoblauch said. “We didn’t have back-to-back wins for about three weeks. Now, one of those weeks was the All-Star break, but good teams are able to put together long streaks. Good teams don’t put long losing streaks together.”
Good teams win third periods. Especially when they have to.
