Oilers 4, Avalanche 1
EDMONTON, Alberta -- The Edmonton Oilers jumped over Colorado in the Northwest Division standings on Monday night with a 4-1 win over the Avalanche at Rexall Place.
The Avalanche were missing a couple of key ingredients in Gabriel Landeskog (head injury) and Ryan O'Reilly (contract holdout), and the Oilers were steaming after a disappointing loss to rival Calgary on Hockey Night in Canada.
It showed.
Edmonton had all of the jump and Colorado took all of the penalties trying to keep up. The result was an assembly line of power-play goals for an Edmonton team that has been generating almost all of its offense with the man-advantage.
The Oilers controlled the first period, spending almost all of it in the Colorado end. The relentless pressure resulted in three Colorado penalties and two power-play goals for Edmonton.
Ales Hemsky opened the scoring with his second goal of the season at 15:23 and Jordan Eberle made it 2-0 at 18:05.
By the time the smoke had cleared in Colorado's net, the shots were 14-3 Edmonton and the Avs were down two.
Another Colorado penalty led to another Edmonton power-play goal, from captain Shawn Horcoff at 9:40 to make it 3-0 at the second intermission.
It was a slow night for Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk. The Avs didn't get their 10th shot of the game until the 12-minute mark of the second period. But he made key saves when Edmonton needed them.
Colorado ended the shutout bid when PA Parrenteau scored eight minutes into the third period.
The Avs went for broke late in the game, pulling their goalie with two minutes to go while killing a penalty. It resulted in an empty-net goal for Oilers rookie Nail Yakupov.
NOTES: Landeskog was removed from the lineup after taking a vicious hit from Brad Stuart in San Jose. ... Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is seeing more time on the Oilers' penalty kill as head coach Ralph Krueger tries to broaden his body of work. "He's one of those complete players where you definitely want to get that growth," Krueger said. ... Edmonton D Corey Potter stepped back into the lineup, spelling Marc Fistric, who played two solid games against Los Angeles and Calgary. Krueger said it was more about keeping fresh legs in a hectic schedule than anything Fistric did or didn't do. "It's more about keeping Corey involved in a week that has four games in it."
