Rested Ducks welcome Pacific-leading Oilers
The Edmonton Oilers will approach a two-game road trip with a little momentum, while the Anaheim Ducks will be waiting and rested Sunday night.
The Oilers will head to the West Coast fresh off a 4-0 victory over the New Jersey Devils, as goalie Mikko Koskinen made 29 saves. Leon Draisaitl scored a goal to give him 14 on the season, and at least one point in eight consecutive games.
After a two-game losing streak at home, including a 5-2 loss to the Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues, Edmonton's victory over the Devils on Friday felt like the leaders in the Pacific Division were back on the right track.
"It was a good team win," Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said on NHL.com. "There's some guys that got on the board that were excited to get on the board. But it's not just getting on the board, but the other three lines really had an impact with their work in the game. That's a good part of it being a team win."
Gaetan Haas scored his second goal of the season for the Oilers in the victory, while Alex Chiasson scored his first. There was less reliance on standout center Connor McDavid, but he did deliver a power-play assist on Chiasson's goal.
McDavid has a point in seven of the Oilers' last eight games, including seven assists in that stretch.
On the other end of the spectrum, Edmonton defenseman Joel Persson had two assists on Friday, the first two points of his NHL career, which has spanned nine games thus far.
"He just did things simple and efficiently, and it kept him out of trouble," Tippett said.
The Ducks will enter Sunday's home game with four full days of rest. They lost to the Minnesota Wild 4-2 at home on Tuesday and are 2-1-1 on a season-long seven-game homestand that won't end until Thursday.
The homestand figured to be a time for the Ducks to send a message to the rest of the league. They won six of their first seven home games of the season, but then lost in overtime to the Chicago Blackhawks last weekend before the Wild got the best of them.
Ducks head coach Dallas Eakins called his team's recent time off a much-needed four-day break for what had been a "tired team" of late.
"I think we've been kind of hanging on by a thread, and we need some much-needed practice time," Eakins said.
The exhaustion showed against the Wild when the Ducks gave up three third-period goals. It was the first time this season Anaheim lost a game when taking a lead into the third period.
The Ducks did get defenseman Ondrej Kase back in action after he missed five games with an upper-body injury.
Things figure to start getting back to normal for Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. He not only appeared in his 1,000th career game when the Ducks lost to the Blackhawks, he was celebrated on the ice, along with his family, before the game against the Wild.
--Field Level Media
