Edmonton Oilers use trusted strategy to choke out New York Rangers

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For the Edmonton Oilers, who are now challenged with offense, the mistake of overcoming them is not an option.

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The day will come again when they are able to bury their opponents with a few good shots, but at the same time they will suffocate them with pillows until they stop kicking.

Like they played against the New York Islanders Friday night and again against the Rangers on Sunday.

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Edmonton’s offense wasn’t excited either night – a regulatory goal against the island and a 40-minute goal against the Rangers – but they never trailed in any game and scored four points.

The 2-1 overtime decision against the Islanders, two goals that ditched the Rangers 3-1 in the third phase seemed to be Edmonton’s much-needed roadmap back to success.

“It’s definitely our mission, and that’s how we want to play the game,” said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who assisted all three Oilers in the first phase (Corey Perry and Viktor Arvidsson and Connor McDavid in the Madison Square Garden).

“In general, it needs to be our mindset over the last 15 games. Especially the last two games are the way we want to play – thwarted the team and led our defense and offense.”

They are sure that they are frustrated by the Rangers. The oiler has almost as much shooting as the Rangers shoot (19) (22).

And, when there is indeed anything, the challenged goalkeeper Stuart Skinner just surpassed his $11.5 million a year peer Igor Shesterkin.

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“I feel good, I feel calm there,” Skinner said. “I feel like I can save when I need it, and these guys are doing well in front of me, especially at the end of six to five, we have two more. We’re still blocking shots, which is a huge praise for these guys, and they don’t have to do it with the remaining 10 seconds.”

Interestingly, it’s very interesting. When a team plays hard, the goalkeeper magically gets better when he is brave. Two nights ago, Calvin Pickard, the Oilers’ reserve, beat another high-paid Russian star Ilya Sorokin ($8.25 million) to stop 24 of 25 shots in the 2-1 decision.

This isn’t always the most exciting brand of hockey, and there’s not much room for mistake when the offensive guys struggle to find it (the Oilers are targeting two or fewer goals in 5 of the last 10 games and three or fewer in the last 9 games), but that leads to a pair of very important wins.

“It’s hard to fight when we stay nervous,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “When one team’s game is frustrating and (the others) start cheating. If we keep doing that, the team will eventually start to leak.”

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So, at the start of the trip, the Oilers returned home from the road trip 2-2 after a back-to-back 3-2 loss in Buffalo and New Jersey. That’s not great, but it put them into second place in the Pacific Division, one point ahead of the Los Angeles Kings (with two games) and closed the gap by four points first.

“It’s just average, you always want to do something better than that, but the way things start is nice to get the last two and feel good about going home,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch, who believes his team has experienced a tragic restart after a 4-country face break.

“We’ve been building since the Florida game. We haven’t won, but since then, I think we’ve been building the game. Those three games after the break (6-3, 7-3 and 4-1 to Philadelphia, Tampa and Washington).

“Since then, I think we’ve been improving (5-3). There’s still room for improvement and we can get better, but that’s a slight leap to climb. That’s what we want, we just want to get better.”

18 and count

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Leon Draisaitl’s first period helped Perry’s goal to expand his score to 18 games, the longest player since Wayne Gretzky in 1986. There are only four Oilers, Gretzky, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, who have had a winning streak of 18 or more games.

The man comes down

The oil man is still a few people. Mattias Ekholm’s lingering damage continues to linger. There are six games now, and the Oilers don’t want him to come back in Tuesday’s game against Utah. Zach Hyman also sat on Sunday, and he recovered from a minor injury to the islanders on Friday night. Trent Frederic is still waiting for Edmonton’s debut after coming from Boston before the trade deadline.

Email: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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