EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had two goals and two assists as the Edmonton Oilers beat the Winnipeg Jets 6-3 Friday night for their second straight win.
Leon Draisaitl and Kailer Yamamoto each had two goals and an assist, and Connor McDavid had three assists for his sixth straight multi point game for Edmonton. Stuart Skinner finished with 25 saves for his second straight win to improve to 17-13-4 this season.
“Our effort was great, the work rate was where it needed to be and the ability to draw as many penalties as we did is a credit to the way we were skating,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “We built a big lead and found a way to get the win.”
McDavid has 10 goals and nine assists in the last six games, and 24 points during a nine-game point streak.
Axel Jonsson Fjallby had a goal and an assist, and Mark Scheifele and Brendan Dillon also scored for the Jets, who lost their fifth straight (0-4-1) and seventh in the last eight (1-6-1). Connor Hellebuyck gave up four goals on 24 shots through two periods, and David Rittich had seven saves in the third.
The Oilers were 2 for 9 on the power play, while the Jets went 1 for 3.
“I’ve never coached a team, I don’t think, that was so undisciplined and took so many penalties. You play a third of the game short-handed against that team, they’re going to make you look bad and they made us look bad tonight,” Jets coach Rick Bowness said. “We made them look a whole lot better than they are. They are a good team, there’s no question about that. My point is we made it very easy for them to play their game.”
Draisaitl put the Oilers on the scoreboard 2:06 into the game as he got a pass from Nugent-Hopkins between the right circle and the goal line, and fired a one-timer on the power play from a sharp angle past Hellebuyck on the glove side. Draisaitl became the eighth player in NHL history with 24 power-play goals in consecutive seasons. He also extended his point streak to 11 games (nine goals, eight assists).
Nugent-Hopkins doubled the lead 1:44 into the second as his shot from between the circles beat Hellebuyck between the blocker and his pad.
Yamamoto then scored twice 40 seconds apart to push the Oilers’ lead to 4-0 midway through the middle period. He now has eight goals on the season, including four in the last five games. It also gave him the fastest pair of goals by an Oilers player since Taylor Hall scored twice in 8 seconds in 2013.
Nugent-Hopkins got his career-high 30th from between the circles off a pass from McDavid on a power play at 2:26 of the third to make it 5-0.
“Guys are finding me with great passes,” said Nugent-Hopkins, who has a career-high 77 points. “I know that I need to step up a little bit offensively and help produce and still try to play that two-way game. I think it just goes to show the way that we are rolling as a team right now.”
Jonsson-Fjallby spoiled Skinner’s shutout bid at 6:22 with a shot from the bottom of the right circle for his fifth.
The Oilers quickly responded on a highlight-reel sequence 1:05 later as Draisaitl was able to put a dislodged Winnipeg net back on its moorings before getting the puck back and putting a shot through a seemingly impossibly small hole for his 38th of the season to restore the Oilers’ five-goal lead.
“I watched the replay and it was pretty cool,” Yamamoto said. “Not many players can make that shot.”
Scheifele scored a power-play goal for his 35th with 8:11 left and Dillon got his second just 1:06 later to pull the Jets to 6-3.
“I thought the third period was a little better, but overall it wasn’t a good game,” Jonsson-Fjallby said.
TRADES
Winnipeg acquired forward Vladislav Namestnikov on trade deadline day from San Jose in exchange for a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. Namestnikov, who had been traded to the Sharks from Tampa Bay two days earlier, did not make it to Edmonton in time for the game.
INJURIES
Oilers forward Evander Kane missed his seventh straight game with an upper-body issue. … Out with injuries for the Jets were Cole Perfetti (upper body), Mason Appleton (upper body) and Pierre-Luc Dubois (lower body). … Jets forward David Gustafsson returned after missing the last 20 games with an upper-body injury.
UP NEXT
Jets: Host Edmonton on Saturday night to close the home-and-home set and open a three-game homestand.
Oilers: At Winnipeg on Saturday night to open a four-game trip.
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