Oilers Beat Cup Champs, McDavid Breaks Records, Babcock Still Not Happy

Mike Babcock is probably going to spend most of Friday explaining to his players why Thursday's win over the Carolina Hurricanes wasn't good enough.

The Edmonton Oilers beat the defending Stanley Cup champions 6-5 in a shootout, overcoming two third-period deficits with the help of five points each from Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, three power-play goals and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' shootout winner in his first game of the season.

Considering the Oilers had just four even-strength shots through the first 40 minutes, I'm not entirely sure how they managed to win this one.

Well, McDavid and Draisaitl had something to do with it.

McDavid recorded his third five-point game of the season, bringing his total to 31 points through 10 games. He's now one of four players in NHL history to reach 30 points through his first 10 games, joining Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Mike Bossy.

Draisaitl scored twice and added three assists, while Nugent-Hopkins had a goal, an assist and the shootout winner.

“I feel like I get asked that a lot and my answer is always yes because he just keeps raising his level,” Nugent-Hopkins said when asked whether McDavid is playing the best hockey of his career.

“It's impressive. Him, Leo and Bouchie have been scoring in big moments. It's not just putting up five points when it's a 5-1 or 5-0 game, they are scoring big goals.”

McDavid has 13 points in his last three games, which is ridiculous even by his standards, and even though I just wrote about everyone needing to calm down about him reaching 200 points, he's certainly not doing much to help my argument.

“What do you want me to say?” Draisaitl said. “It's just not real. He's maybe the greatest player to ever play, in my books. It's a pleasure to share the ice with him, a pleasure to learn from him every day.

“When he was 24, he was just as flashy, just as fast. But there are little details that maybe weren't as great. Now, his game is as complete as it gets, and he hasn't lost a step offensively. I mean, you really just run out of words.”

The Oilers scored three times on the power play last night, continuing an already impressive performance from the Oilers man advantage.

Draisaitl needed just three seconds to score on Edmonton's first opportunity with the man advantage, Nugent-Hopkins scored 44 seconds into the second, and Draisaitl added another just 10 seconds into the third.

That's an impressive amount of offence, although Babcock probably would've appreciated seeing a little more of it at even strength.

Edmonton was trailing 4-2 after two periods, having given up several goals that came directly from defensive mistakes. Sebastian Aho beat Mattias Ekholm to score early in the second, Seth Jarvis got around Evan Bouchard for another, and Jake Walman's turnover behind the net led to Logan Stankoven making it 4-2.

Safe to say, Thursday was not a great example of the defensive turnaround this team seemed to have made.

“I was so excited to play this game 10 games in because we seemed to be getting better and we had a team come in here that flat out competes, knows how to win, does things right,” Babcock said.

“In the end we won, but we got a ton of lessons here. About competitiveness, about doing things right and have everybody be important. Tonight our plan was to roll everybody up front but we didn't have enough players playing hard enough.

“Our toughness on the puck wasn't even close,” Babcock said. “In saying that, the big boys came out in the third and brought their crowbars with them and they had the puck, they were competitive. We needed our bottom six to be more like that tonight.”

The Oilers have been getting healthier, with Zach Hyman back in the lineup and Nugent-Hopkins making his debut, so there's reason to believe Babcock will have an easier time spreading out the minutes as the season goes on.

However, Edmonton has also been winning games where its best players have needed to do most of the work, and I'm not sure that's something Babcock wants to become a habit.

The Oilers have spent the opening weeks of the season improving their defensive structure, winning games with a reasonable number of goals for most teams—think three, maybe four. Last night was a good reminder of why those improvements matter.

See more of The Hockey News on Google and save us as a preferred source. Get the latest news and trending stories by subscribing to our newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com or creating your own post in our community forum.