Edmonton Oilers aren't just winning, they're winning the right way

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In golf, they always tell you there is no room for a story on the scorecard.

It’s not how, it’s how many. Nobody wants to hear about how you got out of the bunker in one shot to save bogey.

In hockey, though, the “how: matters.

All teams can run together a string of wins. All teams can ride a wave of momentum, fortune, high shooting percentages and opposition mistakes and make it seem like they’ve found another level — only to discover, after the percentages come back to reality, that it wasn’t sustainable.

If the foundation isn’t there, it’s not going to last. And it certainly won’t hold up when it counts. Legitimate, long-term success comes from playing a complete, responsible game that’s so repeatable it becomes second nature.

So, as good as the Oilers feel about going 15-3-1 since Nov. 23, they should feel even better about how they’re doing it.

Solid foundation

It’s not a white-hot power play or Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl carrying the team to victory, although Draisaitl’s 14-game points streak is not to be ignored. What we’re watching is the Oilers laying a pretty solid foundation for the middle of January, employing a defensive game that some of the best teams in the NHL have been unable to penetrate.

In beating Utah, Anaheim, Seattle and Boston, the Oilers allowed a total of five goals against. In the three wins before that, they gave up two, two and one. In the five-game winning streak before that, 10 goals against. That’s roughly 20 goals against in the last 12 wins.

They’ve held opponents to two or fewer goals 15 times in the last 24 games and only allowed more than three goals five times in that span.

And now they have crept up to eighth in the NHL in goals against per game (2.73) after sitting at the bottom of the league not that long ago at 4.00.

That playoff muscle memory is coming back to them.

“It’s just the details of our game, areas that we talk about a lot, like the middle of the ice,” said centre Adam Henrique, who scored twice in the 4-0 win in Boston.

“And when there are breakdowns Stu and Picks are there to make big saves. It’s a complete team thing and guys know that’s an area we always have to take care of no matter who we’re playing.”

It starts in goal, where Stuart Skinner once ranked 52nd in save percentage among starters and backups. Now he’s T19 and climbing after putting together a stretch of 10-2-1 with a .929 save percentage in his last 13 starts.

He’s a fighter, having battled back from rough patches several times before, and nothing illustrates that more than his evening in Boston. He gets pulled from the game and sent to concussion protocol after six-foot-six, 248 pound Nikita Zadorov bowls him over like it was fourth and inches, and Skinner never misses a beat.

He returns to the game in the second period and proceeds to deliver a 26-save shutout, which he doesn’t get credit for because he missed the last 5:25 of the first period.

The Boston game might have actually flipped on a huge Skinner save at one end followed immediately by a McDavid breakaway to make it 2-0 at the other.

“If he doesn’t make that save it’s probably a completely different game,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “And in the third period they had a strong push and it was a big performance from him.”

Defence stepping up

It helps the goalie’s cause when the shots are predictable and the other team isn’t getting a lot of clean, easy looks. The Oilers, fifth in the NHL in shots against and second in the league in shot differential, are showing they can tighten things up as well as anyone.

In the second of back-to-back games, when they needed to play smart in Seattle, they held the Kraken to three shots in the first period and 11 shots through 40 minutes Saturday. In what was supposed to be a tough road game in Boston three days later, they held the Bruins to four shots in the first period and 12 shots through 40 minutes.

What looked like a bit of patch work defence back on October is rising to the challenge. Not everyone was convinced that Ty Emberson, who arrived in Edmonton with 30 career NHL games to his credit, or Troy Stecher, who made Edmonton his seventh team since 2020, could hold up their end of a Stanley Cup contender blue line, but the trends suggest they’re doing just that.

Stecher, Emberson and Brett Kulak are providing necessary stability from the 4-5-6 positions while Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard (whose puck possession numbers outweigh the egregious giveaways) are an elite top three.

“We’re happy with our game,” Knoblauch said. “The last month or so we’ve been winning some games but it’s far from being perfect. We have stuff to work on.

“There are teams that we want to pass, teams that are playing better than us and are ahead of us in the standings and there are teams that want to catch us. If we don’t get better every day we’re going to get passed.”

E-mail:?rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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