Oilers become first team in NHL history with five straight comeback wins in a single playoffs

Just call them the comeback kids.

The Edmonton Oilers made NHL history Tuesday night in their 4-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights, becoming the first team to record five straight comeback wins in a single postseason.

Their comeback couldn’t have happened without Vegas taking a 2-0 lead in the game, getting a pair of markers by winger Mark Stone in the first 9:03 of the game — first on the power play, then at five-on-five. But the Oilers stuck with it. Corey Perry got them on the board late in the first to cut the deficit to one, before they rattled off three straight goals in the third period to cap off the comeback.

Edmonton trailed in all four of their wins over the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. In Game 3, they were down 3-2 in the second period before winning 7-4, while in Game 4, they got down 2-0 in a 4-3 win. A win in Game 5 saw them trail early with Andrei Kuzmenko scoring 3:33 into the game, but they wound up taking that one 3-1. In Game 6 of that series, Edmonton trailed 1-0 and 2-1 in the first period, before gaining a one-goal lead by the end of the frame, only to go on to win 6-4.

While the Oilers would surely love to take a lead and not look back at some point, there’s seemingly no game that they can be counted out of.

Those weren’t the only milestones for the Oilers, as four significant milestones were hit:

• Connor McDavid became the second-fastest player in NHL playoff history to 90 assists, hitting the mark in his 81st postseason game, with the only players to reach the mark in less than 100 games being Wayne Gretzky (63 games) and Mario Lemieux (97 games).
• McDavid (four from 2021-25) tied four players with the most consecutive playoff seasons with 10 or more assists, trailing just Mark Messier (five from 1987-91), Jari Kurri (six from 1983-88) and Gretzky (seven from 1983-89).
• McDavid and Leon Draisaitl assisted on the same playoff goal for the 27th time, tying Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman for the second most by a duo in NHL history. The only other teammates with more are Gretzky and Kurri, who each had assists on 37 playoff goals.
• Draisaitl racked up his ninth career game-tying playoff goal, passing Gretzky (eight) for fifth most in Oilers history. He trails Kurri (10), Esa Tikkanen (11), Glenn Anderson (16) and Messier (18).
• Evan Bouchard became the second-fastest defenceman in NHL history to record 50 playoff assists, doing so in 60 games, trailing only Bobby Orr, who did so in 59 games.

Game 2 between the Oilers and Golden Knights is set for Thursday night.