EDMONTON, AB \u2013 The Predators are still the prey.<\/p>\n
Captain Connor McDavid recorded his 14th career regular-season hat-trick, while forward Leon Draisaitl had a goal and two assists for the Edmonton Oilers, who dominated the Nashville Predators again on Tuesday night at Rogers Place to pick up their first win of 2026 with a 6-2 victory on home ice.<\/p>\n
Not only the Predators, but McDavid continues to prey on the entire NHL after tallying his 26th, 27th and 28th goals of the campaign \u2013 scoring on the power play, a penalty shot and at even strength against Nashville to extend his point streak to 16 games, totalling a whopping 39 points (17G, 22A) over that span.<\/p>\n
“It feels like there’s always another level that somehow he gets to,” Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “But he’s playing some phenomenal hockey right now, so Hyms and I are trying to keep up on the same line. It’s not always easy, but he’s playing some great hockey, for sure.”<\/p>\n
McDavid also pushed his point streak against the Predators to 16 games, including 11 goals and 26 assists, while Draisaitl followed suit with his three-point effort to give the German superstar 50 points (28G, 22A) in 29 career meetings with Nashville, including 42 points (22G, 20A) over their last 15 contests.<\/p>\n
“I’m playing well,” McDavid said. “I feel good. Doing a lot of things right, but it’s a credit to Nuge and Hymsy getting back and putting that line back together. It’s gone well. So it’s fun to play with those two. It’s fun to talk about the game, grow our game, and work on our game together. It makes it a lot of fun.”<\/p>\n
Playing on the second line with Draisaitl, Kasperi Kapanen marked his return from a 36-game absence with a goal and an assist, while Vasily Podkolzin had two assists to help the Oilers improve to 14-1-1 over their last 16 contests against Nashville. Curtis Lazar also scored his third goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins reached 500 career assists with the primary helper on McDavid’s hat-trick goal with 57 seconds left in regulation, reaching the milestone in his 993rd career game as he tracks to cross the 1,000-game threshold later this month.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Connor Ingram had the shutout intact early in the third period until the Predators scored twice in 15 seconds, but the 28-year-old went on to stop 24-of-26 shots for his third win of the season.<\/p>\n
After a quick trip to Winnipeg to face the Jets on Thursday, the Oilers will return home to host the Los Angeles Kings at Rogers Place on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON, AB \u2013 The Predators are still the prey. Captain Connor McDavid recorded his 14th career regular-season hat-trick,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-397430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}