Connor McDavid shows his inevitability as the Oilers hand Detroit a 3-2 OT defeat
Connor McDavid shows his inevitability as the Oilers hand Detroit a 3-2 OT defeat
Detroit, MI—The Detroit Red Wings began the night well aware of the test in store for them. The surging Edmonton Oilers were in town, and while the visitors' depth may be an under-discussed aspect of their success, there can be no mistaking the dual epicenters of the threat they pose: Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
On the game's second shift, defenseman Jake Walman rose to that occasion, blocking aside a pair of McDavid shots, an effort that "really set the tone for our commitment for the game" according to goaltender Alex Lyon.
Lyon was right; Walman—who spent much of his night matched up with McDavid—embodied his team's performance on a night in which the Red Wings waged a noble but ultimately losing battle against two of the NHL's preeminent attacking talents, who engineered a 3-2 overtime victory for Edmonton.
Detroit was badly outshot but still could claim a sense that they played the game they had to play to compete—absorbing pressure from the top Edmonton gunners and making the Oilers stars battle for every inch of space in the offensive zone as all the while Lyon was brilliant in staying square to shooters such that he could absorb shot after shot into the Winged Wheel crest across his chest.
"I think for the most part you give a team like that two goals [in regulation], you give yourself a chance, and we did tonight," assessed Derek Lalonde. "When you look back on chances for, they generated a lot of outside shots. I think we did a pretty good job not giving second chances or odd-man looks off the rush."
Through 40 minutes, it was a good enough effort to keep the score at 0-0, and three-and-a-half minutes into the third, it was enough for a lead, when Andrew Copp beat Calvin Pickard from long range with help from twin screens from Michael Rasmussen and Christian Fischer.
But, in the end, there was an inevitability to McDavid.
As the third neared its midpoint, the Oiler captain scored a dazzling goal, even by the standard of his brilliant catalogue. McDavid waited just long enough to seize on a loose puck for a teammate to tag up, then turned Walman around, before sending Lyon in the wrong direction to tuck the puck into an empty net.
Zach Hyman would give the Oilers a lead five minutes later, but Olli Maatta answered for Detroit just two minutes and three seconds after Edmonton went ahead. Regulation concluded with the score still even at two.
As overtime began, the focus could be nowhere but McDavid and Draisaitl. The extra room brought about by the impending three-on-three session left even more open ice for the pair to operate. Unsurprisingly, Kris Knoblauch sent them, along with defenseman Evan Bouchard, out to start OT.
The Red Wings managed to survive their shift, with Walman even breaking up a two-on-one rush that could well have ended the game, but on the next shift, Darnell Nurse pounced on an ill-timed Detroit turnover in front of the net and sent the game-winning goal over Lyon's shoulder.
No, Draisaitl and McDavid weren't even on the ice, but it was difficult not to feel their presence in Nurse's winner.
There was a momentary sense of relief at surviving their bite at the three-on-three apple, and that relief yielded a lapse in judgment in front of the net on an otherwise sharp defensive evening, which in turn left Nurse open for the winner.
"A lot of your focus can end up on defending," explained Copp, when asked about what made it difficult for the Red Wings to generate offense tonight. "They sustain possession pretty well...Once you do get the puck out, you're dumping and changing, or maybe you're not as on your toes on the forecheck, so that's pretty cyclical. When you can sustain O zone possession for long periods of time, that really puts the [other] team back on their heels."
"The hardest thing is you gotta make plays against them too," Copp continued, providing further detail on the grueling mental and physical grind that is attempting to corral Draisaitl and McDavid. "You can't just chip the puck out because then McDavid crosses over, wheels with speed and then comes right back at you. So can't just defend, chip, defend, chip, defend chip. You gotta defend, make a play, then chip and forecheck hard and make them defend."
Despite the defeat and crooked shot margin, it was a night with some positives to be gleaned for Detroit. The most obvious one was Lyon, who finished the evening with 44 saves on 47 shots, but the game also provided an encouraging data point with respect to the Red Wings' team defense, which had looked dubious at best for long stretches during a painful month of December.
Of course, arguably the biggest positive is that, with this outing out of the way, the Red Wings will only have to tangle with McDavid and Draisaitl once more for the regular season.
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