There’s no such thing as a dull moment with these Oilers

When you make a living writing about sports, sometimes you can see the writing on the wall.

As was the case for this scribe, who started work on this article with about 10 minutes left in Thursday night’s game between the host Edmonton Oilers and visiting Montreal Canadiens. The score was 5-3 in favour of the Habs, who roared back from a 3-1 third-period deficit to take what felt like a commanding lead.

This scribe may have gotten ahead of himself because in the final eight minutes and 41 seconds of the third period, the Oilers found a way to win the game. It came off the back of a pair of power play goals from Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and a glorious spin-o-rama backhand goal from Vasily Podkolzin — his first since his father suddenly passed away in late September.

To get to such a feel-good moment, though, wasn’t pretty.

“I think maybe the last 10 minutes of the game, it looked like we were a team (that) played well, but the first 50, it was disorganized. It was lack of work,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “It didn’t look very good and we got a lot of things to clean up. So, yeah, we’re very happy that we came up with the two points.”

Edmonton had gotten down early with Alex Newhook opening the scoring 7:28 into the game, but the Oilers showed some life. David Tomášek would get his first NHL goal, bouncing a puck off a Habs’ skate and in, while Adam Henrique and Andrew Mangiapane would add goals three minutes apart partway through the second.

But then the Oilers got caught in the mud. A two-minute flurry from Montreal would give them a 4-3 lead, as Josh Anderson and a pair from Cole Caufield drowned the Oilers with chants from the plethora of Habs fans. Another from Newhook early in the second would only add to it.

Those lines that were set in place at the start of the game, the 21st different set of combinations, didn’t last into the third, and instead, it helped spark the comeback. While there were a pair of power play goals, the Oilers started to tilt the ice.

After the game, Knoblauch said the new lines would stick heading into this weekend’s back-to-back against the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks, and they’ll see Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl centre their own lines — a move that’s likely overdue. Not only have the fans been clamouring for the Dynamic Duo to run their own lines as they successfully have in the past, but it’s something that the players could be longing for, too.

“Which line?” responded Podkolzin when asked by The Athletic’s Daniel Nugent-Bowman how he’s finding developing chemistry with his line.

If Knoblauch stays true to his word, then Issac Howard and Andrew Mangiapane will be with McDavid, Matt Savoie and Podkolzin with Draisaitl, Henrique and Jack Roslovic with Nugent-Hopkins, and Tomášek and Trent Frederic with Noah Philp.

Nonetheless, the six goals the Oilers put up were double their previous total on the season, and that’s something to build on.

“You want to keep building on what we did right offensively so you try to take the good with the bad there,” said Nugent-Hopkins. “But obviously a lot we can clean up and we’ll address some stuff tomorrow.”