In Edmonton, the Oilers used two power play goals to help defeat the Calgary Flames, 3-2, on Friday night.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Conor McDavid were the power play strikers.
Edmonton had five chances.
Calgary was scoreless on two power plays.
Mike Smith made 24 saves to earn the victory.
“We got behind a couple of times and we were able to get back in the game and push along and we were able to get the third one,” Smith said. “We’ve done a good job to separate ourselves from the pack a little bit and we want to continue to do that and give teams no hope that are out of the playoffs right now and looking in. The main focus of our group is to keep pushing forward and want to be playing our best hockey going into the playoffs. It’s not a switch you can turn off and on, so we want to continue to play well.”
Michael Stone scored his first goal in the opening frame for a 1-0 lead to Calgary.
Nugent-Hopkins tied it up 1-1 in the second period before Matthew Tkachuk put the Flames ahead 2-1 in the middle frame.
“I think it was pretty even, we had good opportunities to go ahead or tie it up and didn’t,” Flames head coach Darryl Sutter said. “The power-play goal, that’s a face-off goal. I’m not so sure if Markstrom saw it or not, it was hard to tell from the bench.”
Dominik Kahun also scored for the Oilers, he tied the game as 2-2
“It was almost like a playoff game, it was very tight,” Kahun said. “I think the biggest thing we were talking about was to outwork them and I think we did a good job with that. All four lines were going today, all four lines were battling and that’s what brought us the win.”
McDavid picked up the game-winner i the third with his 22nd marker of the season.
“It was a good play by Connor and it was a good play by (Alex Chiasson), he kind of jammed everything up there,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said. “It wasn’t clean [face-off] win. We have it set up where there are certain things to happen if it’s not a clean win and fortunately, the puck bounced right to Connor and he shot it quick before anyone could get to him.”
Jacob Markstrom made 22 saves in the loss.
“This has happened a couple of times against these guys in this rink, it’s an even game and they score late,” Tkachuk said. “And they come out of here with two [points] and we come out of here with absolutely nothing.”
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