In Edmonton Saturday, the Oilers struck for two first period goals from Ryan Strome and Connor McDavid and rode that effort to a 4-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens ahead of the holiday break.
Connor McDavid had a goal in 4-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens Saturday night – file courtesy of Lewis Bleiman
Cam Talbot made 29 saves in the win, his seventh in a row.
“I think we’ve been playing some really good hockey lately,” the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl said. “We’re back to playing the way we were playing last year. We have all four lines going right now. It’s nice to take that into the [Christmas] break.”
The loss dropped the Habs to 16-16-5 on the season.
“We’re playing a good hockey team and we made key mistakes at certain times of the game,” Montreal’s Brendan Gallagher said. “And we had our chances. Their goalie made some saves. It’s nothing to hang our head about, the effort.”
Andrew Shaw had the lone strike for Montreal.
“The last two games, we had teams coming in on back-to-backs, and this year, we haven’t been great in the first period, so we wanted to address that,” the Oilers’ Mark Letestu said. “We came out flying in the first period and we were skating and doing the right things, and we capitalized on a couple of good chances.”
Milan Lucic and Jujhar Khaira also scored for the Oilers who improved to 17-17-2.
“They’ve got a lot of talent up front. They’re pretty top-heavy,” the Habs’ David Schlemkosaid. “You have got to do a good job. It starts with executing a little better.”
[WATCH: All Canadiens vs. Oilers highlights]
Antti Niemi made 31 saves in the loss.
“We weren’t good enough in the first half of the game,” Montreal head coach Claude Julien said. “I thought we picked it up in the second half. Obviously, that goal gave us a little bit of life. But we didn’t seem to find our legs or even our momentum in the first half, and we seemed to be chasing the game more than anything else.”
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