The stars shone brightly in the Alberta capital on Tuesday night as Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl led the Edmonton Oilers to a 4-3 OT win over the New York Islanders.
McDavid notched four points (a goal and three assists) to bring his career total up to 999. Two of those points went to setting up Draisaitl for a pair of goals, including the OT winner. Yet, even with all the accolades that came with such a productive night, those two players couldn’t stop talking about the shift before the eventual game-winner.
You knew it would end with McDavid and Draisaitl 🔥
97 and 29 connect for the @SUBWAYCanada OT Winner! pic.twitter.com/0cglar2hn6
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 13, 2024
Just moments before McDavid and Draisaitl stepped on the ice for the last shift of the game, the trio of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Mattias Ekholm were able to pen up the Islanders in the offensive zone for about a minute. This resulted in both tiring out the defending New York players and allowing McDavid and Draisaitl enough rest to hop on the ice to secure the win.
“The whole goal was set up by them,” Draisaitl told reporters after the game. “Unfortunately you don’t get on the scoresheet for that. You rag the puck for, I don’t know how long it was, 50 seconds, a minute, and you get fresh guys and it’s in the back of the net.”
“That’s all certainly the guys before us.”
“We’re not talking greatness, we’re talking legendary type of stuff.”
Leon Draisaitl on #Oilers captain Connor McDavid sitting at 999 career points after four tonight.@Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/iArVfkqXVF
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 13, 2024
McDavid was by far the biggest story to come out of the game, nearly managing to pick up the five-point game needed to help him reach the 1,000-point plateau. While he did find a way to score four, he agreed with Draisaitl’s assessment of that sneaky-good OT play before the winner.
“It was an amazing shift by them,” McDavid said after the game. “I thought they could have scored a bunch themselves. Selfless to change. That was a team overtime win from those three to change.”
“Nights like tonight, you gotta generate your own momentum. I thought in the third we were able to get some things going. Obviously we’d like to close it out, but still find a way in OT.”
Connor McDavid on the #Oilers win over the Islanders. @Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/fTgRaTvR9n
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 13, 2024
This Oilers team will have to rely on each other if they want to get back to playing the standard of hockey they hold themselves to. While it was nice to have the star players firing on all cylinders, having some of the team’s secondary scorers step up is arguably even more impressive.
Now the team will move on to what could potentially be a historic game against the Nashville Predators on Thursday night.