McDavid Records Five-Point Night as Oilers Roll Past Utah 6-2

Connor McDavid is off to a historic start. The Oilers captain piled up five points, two goals and three assists, to lead Edmonton to a 6-2 win over the Utah Mammoth on Saturday night.

It was a rematch from Thursday and the kind of bounce-back game the Oilers should feel extraordinarily good about. “We came ready to play,” head coach Mike Babcock said. “Anytime you’re playing someone back-to-back, you’ve got to get to another level the next night. We clearly did that.”

McDavid now has 23 points (six goals, 17 assists) through eight games, putting him on pace for 242 over an 84-game season. He is the first player in 31 years to reach 20 points in the opening eight games, a feat last accomplished by Mario Lemieux. He did it in 19:52 of ice time, a manageable workload after logging nearly 26 minutes two nights earlier.

The win was a bit of retribution for the Oilers, who had lost to Utah the night before. Thursday's game was chippy, with Saturday's physicality ramped up even further. Some Oilers had taken numbers, and they came to exact some revenge, a point hammered home when Trent Frederic landed several uppercuts in a fight-of-the-year-candidate tilt with Jack McBain. 

“He’s a warrior,” Zach Hyman said of Frederic, who stood up for his captains after taking a couple of cheap shots on Thursday. “He took a couple and then battled his way back in that fight, got his grip. I think everybody in the locker room values what he brings.” Babcock said he didn’t like the cross-check in the previous game and that the team never discussed it, but “they all must have talked about it themselves.”

But, as much as Frederic wowed with his fight, it was the McDavid show. He scored early as he blew past Mikhail Sergachev and he kept scoring. Edmonton improved to 6-1-1 and remains perfect on the road.

Babcock wasn't just impressed with McDavid's ability to put points on the board. “Isn’t he plus-19?” he asked. It was more about McDavid setting an example that the rest of the team could and did follow. "...impossible to coach a team when your best player isn’t driving, and this guy’s driving.”

The supporting cast did step up, led by three returning players: Hyman, Colton Dach, and Jake Walman. Hyman scored in his return to the lineup, and Walman was strong in his own return on the back end.

Hyman credited the depth: “It felt like we were turning lines over pretty quickly, and all four lines contributed. When you do that, it feels like a team win.”

Tristan Jarry made 26 saves for a .929 save percentage.

The emotional highlight came from Trent Frederic, who closed out a fight against McBain with a flurry of uppercuts and fired up the Oilers bench.He said Frederic “did a great job.”

With reinforcements returning and the lineup filling out, Babcock said the team will “really grow” as it gets deeper. If Saturday night showed how well this team can play with most of its roster, it could be a solid run once the team gets Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jason Dickinson, and Matt Savoie back. 

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