The Edmonton Oilers staged a dramatic rally Wednesday night at Rogers Place to beat the Seattle Kraken 4-3 in overtime.
Evander Kane led the rally with a natural hat trick, giving the Oilers a third straight win.
“Going into a long road trip, to finally get a couple of wins at home in a row is nice,” Kane said. “We’ve come back before being down going into the third period, so it was nice to be able to do that for the first time this year.”
“The last 12 minutes of the second period was almost rock bottom,” Oilers Head Coach Kris Knoblauch lamented after the game. “But in the third period we showed a lot of passion and perseverance to stick with it.”
Stuart Skinner stood tall for the Oilers with 13 saves in the first, including an important glove snag on a wide open Oliver Bjorkstrand before the game was two minutes old.
“He was spectacular for us tonight,” Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse said of Skinner.
“He made some big saves at big moments and kept our group in it and we were able to capitalize when our chances came,” Nurse said.
Connor McDavid opened the scoring 5:21 into the second. He was in full flight when he took a pass from Leon Draisaitl then went to the backhand to beat Joey Daccord. The Kraken tied it two minutes later when Jordan Eberle’s rebound went in off Joey Daccord’s skate. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare put the Kraken in front with a deflection of Vince Dunn’s shot. Alex Wennberg made it 3-1 with a spinning shot from in tight late in the second.
“We got in a little penalty trouble in the first half of the third period and our penalty kill did a great job,” Kane said post-game.
“The PK was outstanding and it’s a huge reason why we won,” Skinner said. “The guys in front of me stuck to it. We didn’t change anything even though we were down two goals and that was massive.”
“What I saw was a group of guys willing to block shots,” Knoblauch added.
Kane tipped in a pass from Evan Bouchard with 6:32 left in the third. With Skinner on the bench for an extra attacker, Kane lifted the puck over Daccord to even it 3-3 with 45.4 seconds to go.
Kane won it with 2:03 left it overtime, one-timing a pass from Zach Hyman.
“Hopefully the way we won today makes us a better team in the long run,” Knoblauch said.
Skinner finished with 33 stops.
The Oilers will visit the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday (630 CHED, Face-off Show 12:30 p.m., game at 2 p.m.).
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