In Edmonton, the road weary Arizona Coyotes lost their sixth straight game of their 14-game roadie. The Oilers handed the Coyotes an 8-2 defeat.
“We knew we had a tough opponent and we needed to be much better,” Arizona coach Andre Tourigny said. “I don’t think anybody will feel sorry for us and they should not. We’re professional. Nights like that will happen. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen too often.”
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Connor McDavid each hit for a double in the win.
Stuart Skinner made 16 saves for the Edmonton win.
“Everybody was involved offensively, and I thought we were pretty solid defensively for the most part,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “I think our mentality coming in was it was going to be work based. We wanted to work early and go from there.”
The Oilers improved to 15-12-0.
Jack McBain scored for the Coyotes, and Shayne Gostisbehere added a late excuse me goal for the 8-2 final.
Nugent-Hopkins got the offense going in the first period with a power play goal, Derek Ryan added late period goal to send the game to the middle frame, 2-0, to the Oilers.
“We have a high-powered offense … but there’s not many games where you’re going to score eight goals,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t happen. I liked that we played a full 60 minutes, especially when we were up. We didn’t let our foot off the gas. We stepped on it and kept playing.
“We didn’t give up too much. We have no trouble scoring goals, we’ve had issues limiting them.”
Leon Draisaitl pushed the lead to 3-0 early in the second period, his goal came off the power play.
Draisaitl pushed it to 3-0 at 8:14 of the second period, scoring with a one-timer from below the right circle on the power play.
“It’s another night where it’s too many penalties, and that cost us the game, especially with how much talent they have,” Coyotes forward Lawson Crouse said. “From there on it was just one after the other after the other.
“We just let them control the pace of the game, and that’s ultimately what caused the final score. We’re going to learn from it, but move on.”
McBain picked up the Coyotes briefly to make it 3-1, but Nugent-Hopkins scored 23 seconds later for a 4-1 lead.
“He’s had a focused look all year,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “He has that look about him, the killer instinct or the eye of the tiger, whatever you want to call it. He’s put import on that type of production.”
The Oilers’ Brett Kulak made 5-1 late in the second.
Klim Kostin made it 6-1 in the third, and McDavid scored twice for an 8-1 lead.
Arizona dropped to 7-13-4.
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Connor Ingram made 27 saves in the loss.
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