McDavid scores twice, Oilers beat Wild 5-3 for seventh win in eight games – Edmonton

Vasily Podkolzin scored the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, Connor McDavid had two goals and an assist, and the Edmonton Oilers beat the Minnesota Wild 5-3 on Wednesday for their seventh win in eight games.

“A couple things in the first period that I didn’t like was taking the three penalties,” Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “But, overall, five-on-five I thought was good. I thought we we’re ready to play, but we gave them opportunities to take it to us.”

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins also had a goal and assist, and Zach Hyman started Edmonton’s comeback from a 2-0 deficit with his 15th goal of the season. Calvin Pickard had 31 saves.

“It was a pretty wild game,” Pickard said. “Obviously, it was 3-3 there in the second period and I just wanted to hold them there. I knew we were going to score one or two more. I just wanted to keep it at 3, and it was a huge third period by us.”

Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi and Ryan Hartman scored for Minnesota, which has lost three of four as it deals with major injuries. Filip Gustavsson stopped 31 shots.

Boldy scored his 17th goal of the season on the power play 3:02 into the game and Rossi added another power-play tally for his 17th to make it 2-0 in the first period. But the Oilers had erased the deficit before the end of the first when McDavid scored his first on the power play.

Minnesota lost forward Marcus Johansson in the second after he took an elbow to the face from McDavid. No penalty was called on the play.

Takeaways

Oilers: With Hyman back to being productive on the first line, Edmonton is surging. Nugent-Hopkins is skating with Hyman and McDavid and has six goals in his last 10 games. Hyman has scored in two of three.

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Wild: With four key players out in leading-scorer Kirill Kaprizov and defensemen Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin and Brock Faber, Minnesota has a hard time keeping pace with teams. The Wild have lost three of the four games Brodin and Faber have missed. Kaprizov missed his 10th straight game but has started skating.

Key moment

Hyman’s goal came just 21 seconds after Minnesota had taken a two-goal lead.

Key stat

McDavid passed Jari Kurri for second all-time in points in Edmonton history. McDavid, the three-time Hart trophy winner for league MVP and five-time scoring champion, now has 1,044 points and trails only Wayne Gretzky (1,669) on the franchise list.

Up Next

Oilers visit Colorado on Thursday, and Wild play at Nashville on Saturday.

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