In Edmonton, the Oilers found themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-3, after two periods of play on Thursday night.
Connor McDavid hit for the game-winner in the third period in a 5-3 win.
“He’s pretty good, that’s a nice move,” Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman said. “The puck had eyes. I thought [Andrei Vasilevskiy] stopped the puck, but it got through somehow. But he’s a world-class player, the best in the League. He had 84 points going into the game and has 39 goals, and that says a lot about him as a player.”
Jack Campbell made 28 saves in the Oilers win.
“The confidence has grown in the group, you can feel it on the ice, you can feel it around the room,” McDavid said. “The confidence is a big thing. You have to earn confidence and it goes back to taking it one day at a time, and I think we have done a good job of doing that since the second half started here.”
The Oilers improved to 26-18-3.
The Oilers took a 2-0 first period lead on goals from Ryan McLeod and Leon Draisaitl (power play).
Tampa’s Brandon Hagel cut it to 2-1 with 90 seconds gone in the second period.
Zach Hyman scored the fist of his two on the night to pshe the lead back to 3-1 for the Oilers.
“It was just two really good, competitive teams. Both were coming in on win streaks and wanted to keep them going,” Hyman said. “They came out flat, I guess, but they have guys who wanted to create a spark, and they did. They came back in that game and tied it up. We pushed back too, which was good.”
Tampa Bay dropped to 29-14-1.
“I really liked our second period, but we made a mistake on McDavid’s goal on the end, we were just a little tentative in the play and he finds a way,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Most guys don’t score that, but he finds a way to do those things and that’s why he’s a special player. We lacked a little push down the stretch there, we had the one power play that didn’t work out for us. We fought until the end. It was a good game, but it’s disappointing we didn’t get any points out of this.”
Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point scored to get the Lightning even at 3-3.
“We knew it was going to be a tight game coming in,” Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft said. “This is one of the League’s elite teams, and that’s how we approached the third period. We wanted that to be our best period.”
Hyman added his second into an empty net for the 5-3 final.
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Vasilevskiy made 29 saves in the Bolts loss.
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