The Edmonton Oilers’ impressive win streak has reached a sweet 16.
Connor McDavid had a goal and three assists as the Oilers extended their franchise record run to 16 consecutive wins with a 4-1 victory over the visiting Nashville Predators on Saturday.
Leon Draisaitl had a goal and two assists and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman also scored for the Oilers (29-15-1) who became just the third team in NHL history to have a streak hit the 16 game mark — the Columbus Blue Jackets won 16 games in 2016-17, and the Pittsburgh Penguins won a record 17 straight in 1992-93.
“It’s special,” Draisaitl said. “It takes a lot of good efforts and a lot of good games to get to that number. We have been a bit sloppy the last three games but have obviously had some individual performances that have gotten us the wins. You need that sometimes too. It’s been a great stretch for us.”
The Oilers are now 24-3-0 in their last 27 games — the third team in NHL history to do that as well — and have gone a franchise-record 14 consecutive games allowing two or fewer goals.
Stuart Skinner, the goalkeeper for the Oilers, made 29 saves to move to 19-2 in his previous 21 starts.
Regarding his squad’s ability to prevent the other team from scoring during the run, Skinner stated, “It’s been really impressive.” Being able to observe these things from the back end has been a lot of fun. We used every effort to prevent the ball from entering our net.”
The Predators (26-22-1), who have dropped three of their past four games, were led in scoring by Colton Sissons.
“I thought we outplayed them but unfortunately it doesn’t matter when you don’t get two points,” Sissons stated. “It still hurts.”
Edmonton started the scoring eight minutes into the opening period on the power play as Nugent-Hopkins slid into the high slot and took a feed from Draisaitl before unleashing a quick wrist shot that beat Predators goalie Kevin Lankinen for his 12th goal of the season. McDavid picked up the other assist to extend his home scoring streak to 18 games.
Nashville had several solid chances in the first, none better than on their own power play four minutes later when it looked like Luke Evangelista had a sure goal, only to see Skinner come up with a huge blocker save.
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