Washington Capitals Sink Edmonton Oilers In A Scoring Frenzy

For the first time this season, the 2015-16 addition of the Edmonton Oilers were handed the challenge of facing on offence juggernaut on Friday night over at Rexall Place.

Unfortunately for the Oilers, the room that Ovechkin created by drawing defenders to him left Evgeny Kuznetsov wide open to completely take over this game.

With just 3:01 remaining in the game, Kuznetsov slammed the door shut. Backstrom has been on fire since returning from hip surgery, scoring 4 goals and 3 assists.

Evgeny Kuznetsov and the Washington Capitals certainly didn’t look like a team playing their third game in four nights. The Caps sweep their west Canadian road trip winning their fifth game in a row. “We’re obviously happy to take these points”.

Edmonton Oilers coach Todd McLellan doesn’t need his eyes checked.

Said Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin: “I know as much as what you guys know”. Certain players who didn’t bring it, who were not alert, weren’t sharp, weren’t performing well.

“Each and every game it’s going to get better and better and you’re going to feel more comfortable”, he said. Five shots on goal allowed in the third period, four at even strength. Goalie Philip Grubauer, starting his first game of the season tonight with Braden Holtby getting off for rest, earned the win in net with 19 saves despite it not being the smoothest start ever. Edmonton would once again not the game up at 2-2 five minutes later.

Then, just 30 seconds into the second period, Connor McDavid bounced one in on the power play for his 5th of his career.

The back-and-forth action continued as Washington scored with 20 seconds left in the opening period with Johansson winning a scrum in front to deflect a Williams shot into the net.

Kuznetsov ended the game with 3 goals and 5 points for Washington.

The emergence of the Caps top two lines has been a little surprising as Backstrom has been finding great chemistry with Williams and Johansson while Kuznetsov, Oshie and Ovechkin have been mostly dominant. What made it even worse was the former San Jose Sharks’ bench boss had just finished telling the media earlier in the day that Edmonton would likely not be able to “outscore” the Capitals but could quite possibly “outplay” them.

That spelled the end for Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson, who gave up six goals on 17 shots. From an offensive standpoint, the fact this team scored another four goals is certainly a positive and in today’s National Hockey League when a team manages to put four pucks in the opposing teams net, they should usually walk away with two points in their pockets.