The Day After 38.0: Oilers head into Christmas break feeling good about their game<\/p>\n
A hat-trick from Leon Draisaitl<\/a>, a five-point night from Connor McDavid, a .947 save percentage from Connor Ingram and a 5-1 win<\/a> over the Calgary Flames.Given all of that in the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 final game before the Christmas Break on Tuesday night, it\u2019s easy to see why the team would be feeling good. Couple that with an 8-2-1 record since the Oilers were shutout by the Minnesota Wild on Dec. 2nd, and the fact that the team is tied for the Pacific Division lead<\/a>, and it paints an even clearer picture.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was as good as it\u2019s been,\u201d said McDavid of the Oilers\u2019 play. \u201cReally solid all over. Special teams were great. Five-on-five generated and didn\u2019t give up much, goalie played well. A lot of things to like.\u201d<\/p>\n And for as much as McDavid\u2019s been on a tear in the month of December, already tying a career-high in points for the month with three games to go, Draisaitl was mired in an eight-game goalless drought. It was his longest since between February 19th and March 6th, 2021, though in that drought, he had posted eight assists.<\/p>\n This recent eight-game stretch still saw him be productive in a big way, chipping in 15 assists.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy because I\u2019m creating other looks for guys that I\u2019m on the ice with, so as long as that part of the game is there, I\u2019m happy,\u201d said Draisaitl. \u201cI was never really in a panic mode because I didn\u2019t score in six, seven games, whatever it was.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I felt like I had looks. I felt like the other parts of my games were there, and they were good. So I think it\u2019s just a matter of time for it to bounce in.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, the Oilers find themselves in a great spot heading into the Christmas break. They surged up the Pacific Division standings in December, securing 17 of 24 possible points, and can prepare themselves for another push on the other side of Boxing Day.<\/p>\n The Oilers have had a habit of starting strong after the holiday break.<\/p>\n (H\/t @JasonGregor<\/a>)<\/p>\n This should scare opposing teams, as the Oilers have been tremendous coming out of the Christmas break for three years. As noted by our own Jason Gregor, the Oilers went 8-2-1 in their first 11 games after Christmas last year, 14-0 in 2023-24, and 9-3-1 in their first 13 in 2022-23.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a great opportunity, a great, great opportunity for our group here,\u201d said McDavid. \u201cHome for most of January (and) we don\u2019t go east again.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a lot of tough trips out of the way. We\u2019re healthy. We\u2019re only getting healthier. A little bit of time (off) during this break. I like where our group can go. This is a big month for us coming up. We got to take advantage of this schedule at home here and make a good push.\u201d<\/p>\n Zach Laing is Oilersnation\u2019s managing editor, senior columnist, and The Nation Network\u2019s news director. He also makes up one-half of the Daily Faceoff DFS Hockey Report<\/a>. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing<\/a>, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.ARTICLE PRESENTED BY bet365<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Day After 38.0: Oilers head into Christmas break feeling good about their game A hat-trick from Leon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-367742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}