Zach Hyman scored two goals and had an assist and Leon Draisaitl had a goal and two assists as the Edmonton Oilers rolled over the visiting Vancouver Canucks 6-2 on Thursday.
Emotions were high, but the Oilers played a disciplined game without superstar Connor McDavid, scoring five straight goals in the second game in five nights between the Pacific Division rivals.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Adam Henrique and Kasperi Kapanen also scored for Edmonton, which snapped a two-game skid. Backup Calvin Pickard stopped 24 of 26 shots for the win.
Brock Boeser and Filip Hronek scored and Thatcher Demko made 28 saves for the Canucks.
The league slapped McDavid with a three-game ban on Monday after he cross-checked Vancouver’s Conor Garland in the dying moments of Vancouver’s 3-2 victory on Saturday. McDavid, who has 65 points in 43 games, is eligible to return Monday against Seattle.
Hyman started the scoring at 5:52 of the first period. Draisaitl got creative with a long backhand pass from behind his own goal line to Hyman at the Canucks’ blueline. Hyman then drove to the net and outmuscled defenseman Hronek before slipping the puck through the legs of Demko.
The Oilers then scored two goals in 20 seconds, including one on the power play, to break the game open.
Draisaitl made it 2-0 by scoring at 14:21 just as a Canucks’ penalty was ending. He one-timed a shot from the slot that went in off the left arm of Demko.
Henrique gave Edmonton a three-goal lead at 14:41 of the first. Henrique got a pass behind the net, moved out front and in one motion went down to one knee and jammed it in on the short side.
Hyman deflected a pass into the net just 1:59 into the second period for his second goal of the game to make it 4-0.
Nugent-Hopkins scored a power-play goal with a high shot to Demko’s glove side at 12:02 of the second and the rout was on.
Boeser scored on a snapshot at 12:27 and Hronek on a slapshot at 15:06 of the second to cut the Oilers’ lead to 5-2.
Kapanen got his own rebound and scored halfway through the third to make it 6-2.
The Canucks took 26 minutes in penalties, compared to just eight minutes for Edmonton.
–Field Level Media
