EDMONTON — Monday was a night of firsts for the Edmonton Oilers.
Leon Draisaitl had two goals and two assists and three other players scored their first of the season as the Oilers continued their hot start with a 5-2 victory over the Seattle Kraken.
Duncan Keith, Kyle Turris and Kailer Yamamoto got their initial goals of the campaign and Edmonton improved to 7-1-0.
“I don’t think it was our best game overall, but good teams find a way to win and we did that tonight,” said Keith, who got his first goal as an Oiler in his 1,200th career NHL game.
Draisaitl echoed the veteran defender’s thoughts about Edmonton’s ability to snatch a victory, even on an off night.
“It speaks to the depth of our group that we can win in different ways,” he said. “We can win on the power play and special teams in general, our goalie can steal one, our defencemen are chipping in, our third line has won us games. There are types of different ways that we can win a game and that is a pretty great asset to have on a team."
Jaden Schwartz and Carson Soucy scored for the Kraken (3-6-1) who lost for the second night in a row after dropping a 3-1 decision to the New York Rangers on Sunday.
“It’s frustrating,” Schwartz said. “The last game was right there for us and so was tonight. They were opportunistic to start, we had a lot of good chances, a lot of good looks and we just have to find ways to put them in the back of the net, get hungrier around the net and our power play has to start executing better for us and getting us on the board and getting us more momentum.”
Edmonton's Mikko Koskinen stopped 27-of-29 shots and Joey Daccord had 18 saves for Seattle.
The Oilers scored on their first shot of the game two minutes in when a Tyson Barrie blast deflected off of Draisaitl’s skate and past Daccord.
Seattle responded just a couple of minutes later as Schwartz scored his first goal of the season, battling to split the defence and then sending a backhand shot through Koskinen's legs.
Two minutes after that the Oilers regained the lead using their lethal power play. Zach Hyman sent a pass across for Draisaitl, who scored his seventh of the season into a wide-open net. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins picked up his league-leading 11th assist on the play.
The Oilers went up 3-1 early in the middle frame when Keith crept up to deposit the rebound from a Draisaitl shot past Daccord.
Seattle clawed back within one with 1:20 left in the second as Soucy joined the rush and picked the top corner.
Edmonton made it 4-2 three minutes into the third as Devin Shore made a nice feed to Turris at the side of the net for the tap-in.
Draisaitl got his fourth point with seven-and-a-half minutes to play as he sent Yamamoto in and he made a nice move to score his first goal in 20 games and just his second in his last 36.
“They were just telling me to get to the net and keep shooting and eventually it would come and tonight it finally came,” Yamamoto said.
The Oilers remain at home to face the Nashville Predators on Wednesday, while the Kraken return to Seattle to play the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday.
Notes: The Kraken were without leading scorer Jared McCann, who remained sidelined due to COVID-19 protocols. Also absent from the Seattle lineup were Chris Driedger (undisclosed), Marcus Johansson (undisclosed), Colin Blackwell (lower body) and Mason Appleton (lower body). … The lone player injured for the Oilers is goalie Mike Smith, who did participate in the morning practice.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2021.
Shane Jones, The Canadian Press
