On occasion, a healthy scratch really works well. There are times a wake-up call is needed or a message needs to be received.
Mikkel Boedker was healthy scratch for the San Jose Sharks in their last game and responded Tuesday night with a hat trick in a 5-3 win over the Edmonton Oilers on the
Sharks goalie Martin Jones – Photo by Jack Lima
- road.
“A game like that, when you score on your first shift you’re going to feel good the whole game,” Boedker said. “They came my way today, three good goals.”
Boedker had been on a drought and the Sharks cannot afford dry spells from anyone on the bench in a difficult Pacific Division scramble this season.
“That’s what we need from him,” Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer said. “He was playing well before Christmas and we knew these types of games were coming. He’s in for a big second half, and we need him.”
Brent Burns and Logan Couture also scored for San Jose.
Martin Jones had 33 saves in the win.
WATCH: All Sharks vs. Oilers highlights
Drake Caggiula, Matthew Benning and Oscar Klefbom were the Oilers’ goal scorers.
“We shot ourselves in the foot early on,” Caggiula said. “It’s a tough league to play from behind all the time.”
Cam Talbot made 23 saves in the loss.
“We were too slow out of the gate … for 25 minutes of the game we were on our heels,” Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. “To me, it was very reminiscent of the game in Ottawa [5-3 loss at the Senators on Sunday]. Not really ready to go, too slow, turnovers, no execution early in the game, and then put your foot on the gas and go after a team. In this case we gave up five instead of four [empty-net goal in Ottawa]. We’re not going to win like that.”
The Sharks had built a 4-1 lead before the Oilers responded with two goals to force San Jose into a regrouping to hold down the lead.
“We just had little breakdowns here and there and we weren’t sharp enough in the first half of the game, and I think in the last 25 minutes we actually played really good, but against a team like that you can’t not play that well for as long as we did,” Edmonton’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said of the shortened Oilers’ rally.
DeBoer called a timeout after the Oilers cut the deficit to 4-3 and that seemed to settle his club down.
“It wasn’t the difference in the game but we regrouped and settled in and the next goal was, obviously, a big one,” he said.