Five points on eight goals.<\/p>\n
Sound familiar?<\/p>\n
It should.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s pretty much the same rate Connor McDavid<\/a> and Leon Draisaitl have been producing at in Edmonton all these years. And they were again on Thursday, only this time they were front and centre on the world stage.<\/p>\n The two best players on the Oilers were two of the best players on Day 2 of men\u2019s hockey at the Olympic Games, with McDavid notching three assists in a 5-0 win over Czechia and Draisaitl potting a goal and an assist in Germany\u2019s 3-1 win over Denmark.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Czechs were great, honestly,\u201d the Oilers captain said post-game. \u201cThey came out hard, as expected, they have great players over there.<\/p>\n \u201cBinner (Jordan Binnington) held us in it early, we found a way to get our legs under us and we pulled away a little bit at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n The Oilers captain, who\u2019s been waiting his whole career for this tournament, led all forwards in ice time at 18:04 on a line with Macklin Celebrini and Tom Wilson.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth of them were amazing,\u201d said McDavid, who led the Canadians with six shots on net. \u201cWilly is just a forechecking dog, he\u2019s so hard on guys, creates so much space out there. It was fun. And Mack was really impressive, kept so many plays alive. He\u2019s dangerous, he\u2019s a great player.\u201d<\/p>\n McDavid helped put Canada on the board late in the first period, setting up Celebrini, then put the game on ice by sending a perfect saucer pass to Nathan MacKinnon to make it 4-0 on a power play and sending a nice feed to Nick Suzuki to make it 5-0.<\/p>\n This is pretty much what Oilers teammate Zach Hyman predicted before the Games. He fully expected his captain to stand out even among the best players in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cAny room he\u2019s in, he has the skill set that is just elite and above,\u201d said Hyman. \u201cOn Team Canada everybody has an elite skill set. But the way I\u2019d put it is, if you watch our skate everybody kind of looks the same but there is one guy who looks different. That\u2019s him. And no matter what room or what ice surface you put him on, that is always going to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n In goal, Binnington shook off the critics and posted a 26-save shutout.<\/p>\n \u201cNever a doubt, never a doubt,\u201d said McDavid. \u201cI had all the faith in the world in him, honestly. He\u2019s been solid in those big moments and another one today.\u201d<\/p>\n Draisaitl, skating much of the time with Oilers teammate Josh Samanski, needed just 23 seconds to open the scoring and added an assist on Tim Stutzle\u2019s goal to make it 3-1.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a nice win on a big stage for a program that is moving forward every year, with Draisaitl leading the way.<\/p>\n \u201cGerman hockey has come a long, long way,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just going to try to do my part to help the team be as successful as we can.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time since I\u2019ve been able to represent my country and be around those guys. That\u2019s partly what I\u2019m most excited about, being around my friends and getting to experience this with them.\u201d<\/p>\n E-mail:\u00a0rtychkowski@postmedia.co<\/a>m<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism:\u00a0Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add\u00a0EdmontonJournal.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0EdmontonSun.com<\/a>\u00a0to your bookmarks and\u00a0sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites.\u00a0The Edmonton Journal<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five points on eight goals. Sound familiar? It should. That\u2019s pretty much the same rate Connor McDavid and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5125],"tags":[19,155,2551,198,146,5300,5,1268,7154,370,501,513,517,4,975,24,3037,681,280,1585],"class_list":{"0":"post-456383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-connor-mcdavid","10":"tag-czechia","11":"tag-edmonton","12":"tag-edmonton-oilers","13":"tag-edmontonoilers","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-jordan-binnington","16":"tag-josh-samanski","17":"tag-leon-draisaitl","18":"tag-macklin-celebrini","19":"tag-martin-necas","20":"tag-nathan-mackinnon","21":"tag-nhl","22":"tag-nick-suzuki","23":"tag-oilers","24":"tag-team-canada","25":"tag-tim-stutzle","26":"tag-tom-wilson","27":"tag-zach-hyman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116061084278780529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}