For the Edmonton Oilers, stumbling through their road trip with a dormant power play and an invisible offence, seeing the Ottawa Senators across the ice was like starving cats coming face to face with a room full of mice.
The Senators came in 31st in the NHL on the penalty kill at a woeful 60.9 per cent and are a train wreck defensively, surrendering a league-worst 30 goals against in their first six games.
To illustrate just how porous the Sens have been this year, they’ve allowed more goals than even the hopeless 1-6 Calgary Flames have.
And they were missing their heart and soul, captain Brady Tkachuk.
If the Oilers couldn’t win this one, it was time to start worrying.
Well, you might still want to worry because the mice made it closer than you’d expect, with Edmonton having to squeak out a 3-2 overtime decision.
Against a team that’s been giving up five goals a game, the Oilers could only manage two in regulation, but Jake Walman, returning to the lineup after a day-to-day injury suffered in late September, scored the overtime winner on the power play to avert what would have been a disaster.
“For us to be able to finish this trip off with a win really helps out,” said goaltender Stuart Skinner, who posted the 100th win of his Oilers career. “Because it could have been an ugly road trip.”
It stops the bleeding, putting an end to Edmonton’s three-game losing streak and sending them back to Edmonton (for one game) with a 3-3-1 record, but it doesn’t do much to reassure anyone about Edmonton’s inability to generate offence.
That they had just 12 shots through 40 minutes against a goalie with an .848 save percentage is absolutely mind-boggling.
The Oilers potted a couple of nice ones, with Connor McDavid scoring his first of the season into the top corner and Ike Howard scoring the first of his NHL career on a one-timer from Leon Draisaitl, but that was it.
As the Oilers have been saying all year, you’re not going to win many games by scoring two goals. And, sure enough, the Senators drove that point home in a hurry.
They scored 13 seconds into the third period, marking the third time this year that Edmonton gave one up in first minute of the third period (40 seconds against Calgary, 47 seconds against Vancouver) and it went from bad to worse when the Sens made it 2-2 at 1:49.
The Oilers had been held to two goals in each of the first four games on the trip (the goal to make it a 5-3 loss to New Jersey came at 19:57 of the third period), but that wasn’t going to be enough on this night.
“We were doing well for the most part, then there was a little adversity there,” said Walman. “But we found a way in overtime to get a power play and some momentum and it was just a shot.”
Edmonton Oilers’ Isaac Howard (53) celebrates his second period goal with the bench as Ottawa Senators’ Jake Sanderson (85) skates to the bench during second period NHL hockey action in Ottawa on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.
SWEET ONE
The first goal of Howard’s NHL career, was a thing of beauty. It’s the kind of goal a player lies about having when he’s talking about it later in life, but Howard won’t have to. He cruised into the slot and one-timed a feed from Leon Draisaitl.
“I blacked out there a little bit, I was pretty excited,” he said. “Great play by Leo to have patience and find me there.”
A GRAND NIGHT
On the same night that Howard scored his first NHL goal, Adam Henrique logged his 1,000th game. He won the opening faceoff, centring Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and had Edmonton’s first shot on net. The funny part is that the guy playing his 1,000th NHL game played on a line with Howard (six career NHL games) and David Tomasek (six career NHL games).
BIG NIGHT FOR BOUCHARD
Evan Bouchard had his fingerprints all over this one. His first-period pinch set up the first goal, he made a diving poke check to prevent a sure Sens goal in the second. He broke up an odd-man rush in the third period and then he drew the penalty in overtime to set up the game-winning goal.
E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com