Three players lost to injury, the West’s best team on home ice, the standings looking more and more uncomfortable, and the Edmonton Oilers won anyway. They beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-3 in Denver on Tuesday night.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored twice. Tristan Jarry got thrown into the deep end with 30 seconds left in the second period after Connor Ingram went down with a concussion and was outstanding in the third. Colton Dach and Ty Emberson also left the game. Colorado lost Nathan MacKinnon after a hit on Ingram. The whole thing was a mess, honestly, and Edmonton came out on top.
Oh, and the Sharks lost. So the Oilers put two more points between themselves and the teams chasing them on the same night they beat the conference leader.
“These are games that you can look back on next month and really rally behind,” began Nugent-Hopkins. “Understand that, if we play like that we can beat anyone.”
Just a week ago, Edmonton was getting outplayed 6-3 by the Carolina Hurricanes at home. Their defence was a mess, their confidence wasn’t there, and the playoff picture was starting to look pretty grim.
This road trip has been a different story. They took down Vegas 4-2 on Monday, then turned around and did this. They now have two wins over two solid Western Conference teams in the span of about 72 hours.
“It felt big too, on the bench,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “I mean, we just understand where we’re at. The time of the year, standings-wise. You’re playing a really good team, there’s lots of adversity tonight, and it would have been easy to pack it in. We did a great job just sticking to it and trusting each other.”
Jack Michaels floated the idea during the game that this was a Western Conference Final preview. That's probably getting a little ahead of ourselves there. The Oilers haven’t even clinched a playoff spot yet, but at least people are saying it with a straight face again.
Edmonton went into Ball Arena and beat the best team in the West on their ice. That earns you something.
“When you win games like this, it builds belief in the group,” added Zach Hyman. “The whole way through, we played well. It wasn’t just a fluky win. It was a good team win.”
“We’re also a very good team," agreed Kris Knoblauch. "But being able to size up to a team like that — play a team game like that — everyone did a great job, for sure.”
A lot of that comes back to Jarry. He’s had a tough year, and getting called into a one-goal road game against Colorado with no warmup or time to settle in is a brutal spot to be put in. He came up with the saves they needed.
“We need him,” said Hyman. “We need him to get back to the level that he’s capable of playing at, because he’s a difference maker.”
They need him a little more now that Ingram is uncertain.
“He should feel very good about this," added Knoblauch on Jarry. "He gets in there with 30 seconds left in the second period, and he’s tested two times. Then in the third period, he made some big saves, a couple on Colorado’s power play.
"Yes, he should feel very good about this, and we’re going to definitely need him right away. Once, if not twice, going into this back-to-back at Dallas and St. Louis.”
Dallas on Thursday, St. Louis on Friday. Still on the road, still short-handed, but this team looks more like itself right now than it has in a while. Their defence is more structured, there's less chaos in front of their net, and there's less of a need to throw Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the same line just to score a goal.
Whether this performance holds is a fair question. For now, though, an Oilers win over the Avalanche would have felt impossible back in November, and they get to carry that with them for the rest of the stretch.
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