It may have taken until Jan. 29 to get their third win in a row in 2025-26, but the Edmonton Oilers showed once again that they remain a very hard team to put away.
EDMONTON - Most Edmonton Oilers fans would have been forgiven if they had changed the channel early during Thursday's game against the San Jose Sharks.
The Oilers had not yet won three games in a row, gave up two goals in the first 95 seconds of the game and trailed 3-0 through two periods of play. It wasn't looking at all like a win was in store.
That's when Edmonton's resilience kicked in.
Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and Evan Bouchard scored to tie the game by the final minutes of regulation, and Zach Hyman scored in overtime for a 4-3 Oilers victory and their first three-game win streak of the season.
It was also just the third time the team won when trailing after the first period, going 3-11-2 in those situations this season.
While the Oilers don't want to keep finding themselves starting the game slowly, Hyman said getting out of adversity the way they did against the Sharks can help a team beyond getting the two points.
"This group is pretty confident that no matter how we're playing, we can climb out of a hole," Hyman said. "Obviously, you want to start out great, you want to be in the lead, you want to do all the right things, but sometimes, hockey doesn't work out like that, so it's good for us to win a game like this. You don't want it to happen often, but every once in a while, it's good for your team."
The Oilers have won two games in a row 10 times this season, which made it more and more obvious whenever they couldn't win a third. Nine times after the second win, the Oilers gave up the first goal in the following game, including on Thursday.
That negative trend became the elephant in the room. Now that they took care of it, they need to build on that if they want to overtake the Vegas Golden Knights for first place in the Pacific Division.
"Nobody really wants to talk about it, (so) it's good that we did, it's good that we got that third one out of the way," Kasperi Kapanen said. "I'm sure guys have been thinking about it throughout the year. Hopefully from now on, we can keep playing well and extend that winning streak."
Watch Avry Lewis-McDougall's video column for more.
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