3 Takeaways From Oilers’ 9-7 Win Against Canucks

Netminder Devon Levin stopped 15 of 22 shots in his Oilers debut. Canucks goalie Kevin Lankinen allowed eight goals on 21 shots, before being replaced midway through the game by Leevi Merilainen, who stopped 10 of the 11 shots he faced.

Edmonton never trailed, leading 4-0 at the end of the first period, and 8-3 through 40 minutes. The Oilers were two-for-five on the power-play and killed off two of three Vancouver power-plays while also scoring twice short-handed.

This was the second of back-to-back games between the Oilers and Canucks to open the 2026-27 NHL season. Vancouver defeated Edmonton by a score of 6-5 in overtime at Rogers Place on Tuesday (Sept. 29).

Oilers’ Offensive Eruption

Offensively speaking, this was a generational performance by the Oilers. The nine goals are Edmonton’s most in a road game since 1996, and Thursday marked only the second time in the last 35 seasons that the Oilers scored four goals in each the first and second periods.

Kapanen and McDavid scored 34 seconds apart on the same Canucks power-play during the second period, giving the Oilers their fastest two short-handed goals in a game since Jan. 19, 2000.

Thursday was also the first time that the Oilers won a game when allowing at least seven goals since Dec. 11, 1985, when they defeated the host Chicago Blackhawks by a score of 12-9 in what is tied for the highest-scoring game in NHL history.

All that scoring meant a number of individual milestones for the Oilers, too: After setting the season-opening record for NHL defenceman with five points on Tuesday, Bouchard added two assists along with his goal on Thursday to establish a new NHL benchmark for most points by a blueliner over the first two games of the season.

Meanwhile, McDavid picked up four helpers on Thursday, giving the Oilers captain a five-point night. Edmonton is just the second team in NHL history to have at least one player register five or more points in each of its first two games of a season, joining the 1973-74 Boston Bruins.

Oilers Take Foot off the Gas

When Kapanen scored 8:23 into the second period to give Edmonton an 8-2 lead, no one would have imagined that would turn out to be the game-winning goal.

At that point, the Oilers were rolling. A win seemed virtually guaranteed, as it should be with a six-goal lead. But a team should never allow itself to think like a game is already over, because then they start playing like the game is already over. And that’s exactly what happened to the Oilers at Rogers Arena on Thursday.

Bains put the puck past Levi with just one second remaining in the second period to make the score 8-3 in favour of the Oilers. Vancouver then scored three times in the opening 7:37 of the third period, and suddenly Edmonton’s lead was cut to two goals with more than a dozen minutes to play.

“I really liked our game in the first (period). I liked it for half the second, and then I didn’t like it all,” new Oilers coach Mike Babcock said during his post-game media availability. “We’ve got to learn how to play a whole 60 (minutes), not just 30.”

He’s only two regular season games into his tenure as Oilers coach, and already Babcock is learning firsthand about what has been a problem with this team for years.

“What I saw tonight was a group that could play right and knew what they were doing and then I saw a group that didn’t do it,” the coach added. “So the main thing is if you know you can do it, now you just got to find a way to repeat, repeat, rinse, repeat, and just do it again.”

Pucks Piling Up in Oilers’ Net

Veteran Oilers goalie Tristan Jarry had a nightmarish start to the season on Tuesday, allowing six goals on only 23 shots. But that was nothing compared to Levi’s disastrous performance in the crease on Thursday. Jarry at least stopped a couple difficult shots and came up with a timely save or two. Levi did neither.

In his first game as an Oiler, the 24-year-old had a very quiet first period, facing just two shots and blocking both. But as soon as Levi started facing a steadier stream of rubber, he couldn’t string more than a few saves together, allowing three goals on eight shots in the second period, and four goals on 12 shots over the final 20 minutes. He finished the game with a save percentage of .682, which is the worst ever for an Oiler goalie in a game in which they are also credited with the win.

There were a handful of shots that Levi should have stopped that he didn’t, but Edmonton’s defence certainly wasn’t innocent in the deluge of Vancouver goals, either. Most culpable was the Oilers third pairing of Shakir Mukhamadullin and Jake Walman, who have struggled mightily over the first two games.

After a turnover in his own end led to the first Canucks goal, scored by Cotter, Walman screened his own goalie on Vancouver’s second goal, by Boeser. Mukhamadullin, meanwhile, screened Levi on  the fourth Canucks goal, from Rossi, before committing a turnover that resulted in Pettersson scoring Vancouver’s fifth goal. Walman finished the game with a -3 rating, while Mukhamadullin was -4, tying for the worst plus-minus in a win in Oilers history.

As Babcock addresses the issue of giving up far too many goals, it will be interesting to see who suits up between the pipes and on the blueline for Edmonton’s next game, at home against the Seattle Kraken on Saturday (Oct. 3).