They didn’t deserve it, and they didn’t look good doing it, but life and hockey aren’t always fair.
So, on a night when the Edmonton Oilers were, by far, the second-best team on the ice against the Montreal Canadiens, they somehow came away with two points.
They needed a fantastic night in goal from Calvin Pickard and got some major assists from the referees, but a win is a win is a win. Even when it’s as bad as this one was.
“Ugly as it gets, but we got the two points,” said Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse, after three-straight Oilers goals in the third period turned a mess of a contest into fortunate 6-5 victory. “We still have some work to do.”
Even with the Canadiens playing their second game in as many nights after coming off an overtime win in Calgary, the Oilers didn’t have an answer for Montreal’s speed and skill. It looked very much like the first-place team in the East playing the 11th-place team in the West.
When the Canadiens wound it up, the Oilers were hanging on for dear life.
The Oilers won. but they aren’t kidding themselves. They got lucky. And they got help.
“It just wasn’t good enough,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “We took advantage of some power plays at the end that we scored on, and then a really big one there by (Vasily Podkolzin’s winner at 18:51), but I would say for most of the game it was not our standard.”
It wasn’t. Fortunately for Edmonton, referees Garrett Rank and Chris Schlenker played a big role in this one, doling out five power plays for the Oilers and just one for Montreal, even though Montreal dominated possession. In the end, that turned out to be the difference. Edmonton used one of them to change the momentum in the second period and scored on two more power plays to tie it in the third.
“It’s easy to be frustrated by the result and by everything that happened,” said Montreal coach Martin St. Louis. “The Oilers won on the board, but they haven’t beat us.
“As coach, we look at video and we try to get better, I hope the League will do the same process.”
The worst of it came after Leon Draisaitl’s power play goal, following a borderline tripping call, made it 5-4 with 8:41 left in the game. Immediately after the goal Josh Anderson fired the puck out of his net and tapped his stick on the ice while looking at Schlenker, who responded with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Nugent-Hopkins power-play goal tied it less than a minute later.
Giving a guy two minutes for for that, when the power plays are already 4-1 and Edmonton just scored a power play goal, is as weak as it gets, but the Oilers were happy to accept the gift.
“I don’t know about the calls themselves, but when you get an opportunity like that, especially in the situation we were, you have got to take advantage,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “And I’m happy that we did that.”
No surprise that the Habs feel cheated, though.
“The referee had the choice to give two or 10 minutes, he gave two, that gave them the game, that’s the only reason they came back,” said St. Louis. “At five-on-five, we played our most complete game, but when you give them those power play one after the other, it’s not easy for our players. Honestly, the result is disappointing, but I’m happy the way we played.”
And the Oilers weren’t. In fact, they were damn lucky the game wasn’t over after 20 minutes. Montreal swarmed Edmonton’s end and generated six or seven high-danger chances while holding the home team to just two shots through the first 16 minutes.
Pickard kept it from getting out of hand early as Edmonton’s goaltending continues to be the strongest element of its game right now. He kept them alive long enough for a second period power play to get them going, turning the momentum and leading to goals from David Tomasek and Adam Henrique three minutes apart.
Being up 3-1 with just over three minutes to go in the second period seemed like a good place to be.
It wasn’t.
Montreal wound it up and the Oilers got absolutely scorched. Anderson scored at 16:57, Cole Caufield at 18:00 and again at 18:49 and Alex Newhook scored 2:10 into the third period. Four goals in just over four minutes turned Edmonton’s 3-1 lead into a 5-3 deficit.
Then came the penalties and the tide was turned for good. It started with a phantom boarding call on Juraj Slafkovsky and got worse from there.
“I talked to them after that one and they admitted (Slafkovsky) wasn’t a penalty and they made a mistake,” said Montreal’s Brendan Gallagher, who feels giving an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in that situation is a bad look for the officiating crew.
“Being an official, you have to understand the temperatures of the game and that’s part of it. You have to control it, especially when it’s a close game. We were out-playing them, we were out-shooting them, how are they getting more power plays than us?
“It just feels like it’s the same story: they’re really good players, they don’t need the help.”
The Oilers actually needed it really badly on this night.
“You try to take the good with the bad there,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “There is obviously a lot we can clean up. I thought tonight again we were lacklustre at the start. We found a way to get it done but we know there’s a lot more in this room, for sure.”
E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com