Slow and steady wins the race, or in this case, first place in the Pacific Division on January 26th.
It ain’t much, but it’s honest work — and these Edmonton Oilers have put it in.
All of it culminated Saturday afternoon when the Oilers took down the Buffalo Sabres 3-2 in some matinee action at Rogers Place. As a result, it pushed the Oilers ahead of the to grab hold of first place in the Pacific. For now.
“It’s our goal to keep racking up the points, get as high as we possibly can,” said Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who scored the second and third goals of the game to secure the win, building off Jeff Skinner’s first-period marker.
The road hasn’t been easy to get to January 26th, and it will be a lot harder if they want to be playing into the end of June for a second straight year. After all, the Oilers had a no-good start to the season, posting a measly 6-7-1 record through their first 14 games and a 10-9-2 record through their first 21.
It certainly wasn’t as bad as last year’s start to the season, going 4-9-1 through 14 and 8-12-1 through 21. There’s solace in the improvement, Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner said, who was tremendous against Buffalo stopping 39 of 41 shots.
“I think we just learned a little bit quicker this year,” he said. “It probably felt a lot worse that what it actually was, but the way we’ve been playing says a lot about our group and how mature we are, how much mental resiliency we have.”
One of Edmonton’s goals to start the season was winning the Pacific Division. Much like they learned a lesson last year about how difficult a slow start can be, they also learned how difficult a deep playoff run is when you don’t have home-ice advantage.
“Whether we’re at the beginning of the season out of a playoff picture or in first place, I didn’t look at the standings much,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “I know it was a goal of ours to win our division.
“Just rewind back to last year through the playoffs, and what a difficult road that we had. We started at home, but then the next three series were on the road. You think (about) the possibility of making that a little bit easier on ourselves, whether it’s shortening up a series, or having home-ice in a Game 7 situation. I just think it helps you along the way to finish at the top.”
The job’s not finished, though. Far from it, and the players know it.
Their overarching goal this season is singular: win a Stanley Cup. In the grand scheme of things, nothing else matters.
“The jobs not finished here,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “We can keep getting better, but after the start we had we should be not satisfied, but happy from where we’ve come.
“We’ve obviously got to keep playing well. there’s some good teams who are going to be trying to climb the standings for sure. Things start to tighten up the last half of the season.”
The Oilers have now gone 2-1 while Connor McDavid served his three game suspension, improving to 4-2 without him in the lineup this season as a whole. In them, the Oilers have outscored their opposition 20-13.
And while there’s no denying how much better this team is with him than without him, their ability to do better than treading water without him in the lineup is huge.
Now, they’ll get him back Monday night when the Seattle Kraken come to town.
