{"id":543491,"date":"2026-03-16T06:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543491\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T06:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:19:07","slug":"oilers-starting-to-find-winning-formula-after-closing-out-predators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543491\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers starting to find winning formula after closing out Predators"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0The mystery around the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> \u2014\u00a0a team having a meh season inside a decidedly average Pacific Division \u2014\u00a0is that they\u2019ve done it before.<\/p>\n

No matter what they\u2019ve looked like this season, the Oilers have been a very good team for a long time now. Good enough to win the West in back-to-back seasons, experienced enough to be ready when the playoff puck drops \u2014\u00a0assuming they can lock down a ticket to the dance.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no flipping a switch on April 19. There is a runway of a month, and with four pretty good outings in their past five games (3-1-1) \u2014\u00a0including Sunday\u2019s 3-1 win over Nashville \u2014\u00a0you might be able to see the formation of a game that can win, if rolled out night after night after night this spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re at a point in the season where we don’t have a choice,\u201d said Zach Hyman<\/a>, who could have had three or four goals Sunday, but settled for the empty-netter instead. \u201cWe have to play well. We have to win games. We have to close games out. We have to play strong defensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did all those things \u2014\u00a0it was a good team effort from our goalie all the way out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bad news: Leon Draisaitl<\/a> left the game at the end of the first period, came back and tried out his undisclosed injury, then left for the night. Head coach Kris Knoblauch had this to say about his 35-goal man:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t feel right, he went off,\u201d said Knoblauch, describing the sequence of events around Draisaitl\u2019s eventual departure. \u201cHe got checked out, felt like he could play on it, and the medical staff looked at him. They were comfortable with him trying it out, (but) he went out and he just didn\u2019t feel quite right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact the medical staff said, \u2018It doesn\u2019t seem too bad and there\u2019s no immediate red flags,\u2019 tells me that it shouldn\u2019t be a really long injury. There might be some time off, but we\u2019ll find out later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The good news: Ozzy Weisblatt, whose hard, clean check injured Draisaitl, was a target from that point on Sunday. In a league where people notice, the Oilers made sure they answered the bell \u2014\u00a0including a crushing check by Jake Walman on Weisblatt in Period 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you saw an emotional response, which is really good,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cGuys sticking up for Leo, one of the best players in the world. If guys want to take runs at him, there\u2019s going to be a response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, you want to win the game for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The even better news: Connor Ingram<\/a> may just be the answer to a goaltending position that haunted this team.<\/p>\n

Ingram, anointed as Edmonton\u2019s undisputed No. 1 after the morning skate Sunday, gave his team a high-quality start in a game that went down to the wire before Hyman\u2019s ENG with 67 seconds to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving your coach behind you is huge,\u201d Ingram said after his 26-save night, \u201cbut at the end of the day my job never changes. I\u2019m going to come in and be the same person I\u2019ve been for the last three or four months. It\u2019s exciting for me but at the end of the day, like I\u2019ve said a thousand times, it\u2019s just stopping pucks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same thing every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oilers take a strategy as simple as that, all day every day.<\/p>\n

With the travails of Tristan Jarry having been well chronicled, wouldn\u2019t it be something if the answer came in the form of the former Arizona Coyote, who came out of the Players Assistance Program, was denied an invitation to Utah\u2019s training camp, then was dealt to Edmonton with the label \u201cPROJECT\u201d stamped on his forehead like the band-aid he\u2019s still wearing after that collision with Nathan MacKinnon last week.<\/p>\n

But the best news on Sunday was this: two days after the Oilers had blown a 2-0, third-period lead to drop a 3-2 OT decision in St. Louis, they closed the deal in a very similar circumstance back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to put yourself in positions like these \u2014\u00a0position to close out a game. Because these are the positions you’re going to be in in the playoffs,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cWe know that this is how you\u2019ve got to play, 2-1 games, 2-0 games. Those are must-win games. You can’t afford to blow leads like we did last time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0The mystery around the Edmonton Oilers \u2014\u00a0a team having a meh season inside a decidedly average Pacific…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-543491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543491","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=543491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}