In Edmonton, the Minnesota Wild scored four straight goals in the first period on Sunday and handed the Oilers a 7-3 loss.
It was the first loss under new bench boss, Jay Woodcroft.
Kaapo Kahkonen made 30 saves in the Wild win.
“We were on the right side of the puck all night, in all three zones, but especially in the D-zone,” Minnesota head coach Dean Evason said. “We really took care of being between the net and the players, and nobody really got behind us. We were very mindful of where everybody was on the ice, and it led to offense. We don’t feel we’re an offensive team, we feel we’re a well-rounded, two-way hockey team. We don’t want to get into track meets, we don’t want to get into a rush game, that’s not who we are. We talk about it all the time, it’s grit before skill, and if we do that, then our skill will show. If we try to do it the other way, then the skill doesn’t come out.”
Kevin Fiala hit for a double and three points in the win.
“Sometimes it doesn’t go in and tonight, it kind of went in,” Fiala said. “We started well. We know losing two in a row is not good enough for us. We are not always going to win, but we don’t want to lose two in a row, and tonight was a great response for us.”
The Oilers dropped to 28-19-3.
“Obviously, we didn’t have much jump today,” Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl said. “We got off to a really bad start. This league is too hard to come back from a 4-0 deficit. We had a little push in the second but couldn’t really get anything going.”
Tyler Benson, Evander Kane, and Zach Hyman scored for the Oilers.
“I’m not happy with the result, I’m not happy with the way we began the game as a group,” Woodcroft said. “I thought we made some errors that can be cleaned up. You find yourself down 4-1 at the end of the first period, and you go into the dressing room and you talk about the things you want cleaned up. I thought we got a little better as the game went on, but just some mental errors that ended up in the back of our net.”
Brandon Duhaime, Joel Eriksson Ek, and FIala scored in the first period outburst for the Wild.
Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello also scored for Minnesota.
“I think we played our game more tonight, right from the beginning, just getting pucks in and playing hard and not letting them break out,” Boldy said. “It’s definitely more our style of how we want to play. No matter what, our starts could be a little better than they were, and that’s obviously a big key to our game, getting a good start, getting pressure on them and getting on them from the beginning.”
Connor Dewar and added single markers for the Wild.
Mike Smith surrendered the four goals in the first period, he was given the hook after making three saves.
Mikko Koskinen made 12 saves in a mop up role.
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