The up and down season fr the Edmonton Oilers was up on Monday night in a 7-2 win over the visiting Buffalo Sabres.
Mikko Koskinen made 41 saves in a busy but solid performance for the Oilers.
Milan Lucic picked up two goals in the game and seems to be getting on track (in time for trade season); he has three goals in the last four games.
“It feels good as an individual to pop a couple tonight, but the most important thing is that we got the two points in the standings,” Lucic said. “We finally got some bounces that went our way when they have gone against us the last three games. It was nice to get a win here. As of late, we have won one, lost one, won one, lost one, so now it is about putting something together.”
Lucic had one goal through the first 42 games.
“For me, this is five games in a row that he’s been like this,” Oilershead coach Ken Hitchcock said of Lucic. “He’s really playing well. He looks like the player that was around two or three years ago. He’s got speed, he’s got tempo in his game at both ends of the rink. He’s able to pressure and control the boards and make quick decisions off the boards.”
Zack Kassian also struck twice for Edmonton.
“It is nice to chip in two goals,” Kassian said. “I don’t think I have ever had a stretch where I had gone 40-plus games and had only two goals before. Hopefully the floodgates open now.”
Connor McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Leon Draisaitl also scored for the Oilers.
The Oilers moved to 22-21-3 with the win.
Casey Mittelstadt and Evan Rodrigues were the Sabres’ goal scorers.
“We let one get away from us,” Rodrigues said. “I think they got a few early, one goes off our stick, one is a random shot that gets deflected in. We had our chances, we just gave up too much and we let one get away from us in the second half.”
The Sabres have lost three straight and dropped to 23-17-6.
“It seems like our mistakes right now, every single one ends up in our net. You know you’re going to make mistakes over the course of the game, but the magnitude of the mistakes are probably too big,” the Sabres’ Jack Eichel said.
[WATCH: All Sabres vs. Oilers highlights]
Carter Hutton made seven saves on 12 shots before getting the hook early in the middle frame.
“When you look at the whole body of work in our game, we had a rough start, we turned some pucks over and we talked about rush coverage this morning, and I didn’t think we did a very good job of that,” Sabres coach Phil Housley said. “We can’t give those kind of odd-man situations up against a good team that can kill you on the rush.”
Linus Ullmark was not any more effective in relief.
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