Oilers go toe-to-toe with feared Bruins, then beat them at their own game

BOSTON — Perhaps the day will come when teams speak of the Edmonton Oilers, or whatever your favourite team might be, the way hockey people speak of the Boston Bruins.

Structure. Character. Culture. Roster construction.

There’s a reason why the Bruins are the National Hockey League’s standard bearer, the way the Montreal Canadiens once were. Why, whether they prevail in the playoffs or they get upset like a year ago, they’re back again the next year, as feared as ever.

Because here in Boston, through the Bergerons, the Charas, the Krejcis and the Recchis, they’ve had it figured out for coming on 20 years now.

A Bruins team that beat Vancouver in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final has, in the 12 years since, been back to two more Stanley Cup Finals and only missed the playoffs twice. The Canucks, an organization seeking that continuity that Boston has coined, has won one COVID bubble playoff round since 2011, missing the playoffs in eight other seasons.

So, on a rainy Tuesday night in Beantown, there were the Oilers, another team trying to become one of the big boys. Tied 0-0 after 40 minutes at The Garden.

Down 1-0 after 58 minutes, but sticking to the process. Playing the Bruins at their own game in Boston, and eventually, beating them at it, 2-1 in overtime.

“They're a good team that knows how to win,” said Zach Hyman, who was on the doorstep as a seeing-eye puck redirected by Leon Draisaitl popped up and over Boston goalie Linus Ullmark with 1:20 to play and Stuart Skinner on the bench, sending the game to overtime.

There, Draisaitl ended it with a missile off a pass from — who else? —  Connor McDavid.

“Coming in here and winning is not easy,” Hyman said. “To be able to stick with it, play that type of game and win that type of game, is a good sign for us.”

This game was a grind. A playoff grind.

Eighteen skaters gave the Bruins as little as possible. Three of them did what they get paid to do, as Draisaitl (two goals), McDavid and Evan Bouchard (each with two assists) hogged all the points for Edmonton.

Quietly, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins made it all possible when, at 1-0 Boston, he saved the day with a backcheck that just tipped Danton Heinen’s shot at an empty net off the outside of the post. Fifteen seconds later the puck was behind Ullmark

“Yeah, the game's over there, for sure,” winger Mattias Janmark noted. “That's the kind of efforts we need, and I feel like everyone is bringing it.”

Overtime isn’t what it used to be, with teams trading the odd-man rushes that Draisaitl and McDavid once feasted on. Today’s extra session is more tactical, with more time spent weaving around the offensive zone, waiting for a matchup to be missed.

Draisaitl, cruising like a shark at the top of the zone, dropped into a dangerous area just as McDavid sauced a lovely pass through skates. He wired it past Ullmark, and a full house groaned.

“When three-on-three first started it was a lot easier. It seems like everyone has it figured out — we used to score a lot more,” chuckled Draisaitl. “I've been doing this for a long time with him (McDavid), so definitely (there is) some confidence there.

“Tough, tough team to beat. Tough building to play in,” added Draisaitl, who is up to 32 goals now. “They play a playoff-style game every night. So good for us to stick with it.”

The shots on goal were even at 26-26, in a fairly low-event game. But Edmonton directed 54 shots toward Ullmark to Boston’s 37 at Skinner.

The Oilers won 57 perc ent of the faceoffs — Draisaitl won two huge draws late in regulation and Ryan McLeod had a 75 per cent night — a column on the stats sheet that the Bruins have owned for years.

“Boston is such a good team, and it’s so hard to win here,” began defenceman Vincent Desharnais (five blocked shots), whose role on this team just keeps increasing. “It was tight. Not many shots. Lots of blocked shots. Lots of hits.

“Who knows?” offered Desharnais. “We might see them. We might see them (again) at some point.”

Skinner was beaten just once, a perfectly played two-on-one resulting in a Pavel Zacha one-timer that just was not going to be stopped. Through the rest of the night, Skinner’s teammates made sure he could see whatever Boston was throwing at him, and the goalie responded by stopping everything he was supposed to stop, and the very few others that were even choicer in grade.

In the end, they would have liked their game just fine if it had ended in a 1-0 loss. But a 2-1 overtime win — Edmonton's fifth straight win — is so much sweeter.

“When you're playing a team that's at the end of a road trip, at the bottom of the standings, or just a game that just doesn't mean much, you don't get as excited,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “Against a good team a team that you measure yourself up against, that’s among the elites in the NHL…

“It feels much better, yes.”