In St Louis, Edmonton’s Kailer Yamamoto scored with 28 seconds left on the regulation clock on Sunday, to give the Oilers a 5-4 win over the Blues.
Mikko Koskinen made 35 saves. for the Oilers in the win.
“It’s huge,” Yamamoto said. “Any time you can get a game-winning goal, it’s huge. I’m definitely going to try and build off that.
“It was a good pass by (Edmonton defenseman Darnell Nurse), kind of made a tight turn to ‘Leo’ and we all kind of did the rest. … I tried to find some soft ice, open ice and he found me. Luckily, it went in.”
The Blues had rallied from a 2-4 deficit in the third off goals from Ivan Barbashev and Vladimir Tarasenko.
“They were back. When Draisaitl turned up, (defenseman Calle) Rosen’s on him,” St. Louis head coach Craig Berube said. “I’d like to see Thomas back off a little bit and be in better position and Parayko out farther on the guy and be tighter. That’s basically what it boils down to.
“Yeah, it’s disappointing big time. It’s disappointing and we’ve got to be better, and we will be.”
With the game knotted at 2-2, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Ryan McLeod scored with just eight seconds separating the red lights for the 4-2 Oilers lead in the middle frame.
“It was a pretty surreal moment,” McLeod said. “The puck was kind of going to the net and I was kind of coming down the middle. It popped out, and I took a backhander and the guys put their arms up. I honestly couldn’t even see it go in.”
Edmonton improved to 11-3-0.
Robert Bortuzzo and Jordan Kyrou also scored for the Blues who have lost three straight, 0-2-1.
“It’s just frustrating,” Bortuzzo said. “I think every guy in that room knows how valuable points are, no matter what time of year it is, the League’s too competitive, there’s too much parity. Strong division. So frustrating to give a few of those away, especially tonight where I thought we had great energy and a little lapse in the second but overall, I thought, good, strong spurts of hockey, similar to [Saturday] night, where we kind of played a good third period. Just frustrating.”
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl hot for goals for Edmonton.
“Kind of a mixed bag tonight,” McDavid said. “I thought our first wasn’t great. Mikko held us in it, and I thought our second was real good and (we) deserved to be up. We gave it back to them, but I like the way we responded.”
St Louis dropped to 8-4-3.
Jordan Binnington. made saves in the Blues loss.
“Late goals, those are killers, end of periods and they change the momentum of the game,” Thomas said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.