The Canadian Press
EDMONTON–It seems the Edmonton Oilers finally are hitting their stride.
Ryan Strome had a pair of goals as the Oilers won their second-straight game with a 5-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks last night.
Mark Letestu, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Patrick Maroon also scored for the Oilers (15-17-2), who won back-to-back games for just the third time this season but have victories in four of their past six.
“We have gotten the ship slowly going in the right direction the last eight or nine games,” Strome noted.
“We have to keep it going.
“Obviously, the divisional games are very important,” he stressed.
“We have a lot of those in the second half [of the season] and this is a good start.”
Joe Pavelski, Timo Meier, and Marcus Sorensen replied as the Sharks (17-11-4) lost back-to-back games.
“We’re not as tight defensively as we have been,” said Sharks’ head coach Peter Deboer.
“We’ve also got some guys out of the lineup who weren’t out earlier in the year, too.
“I think we did a good job on [Connor] McDavid tonight,” he added.
“I thought the difference in the game was the depth. They got some more depth scoring than we did.”
San Jose opened the scoring with a power-play goal just six minutes into the first period as Pavelski swooped in to put a rebound past Oilers’ goalie Cam Talbot.
Letestu beat Sharks’ goalie Martin Jones with a one-timer shortly after an Oilers’ power play expired to tie the game with five minutes left in the first.
Leon Draisaitl made a perfect pass across to Strome to give him a wide-open net to deposit the puck into and give Edmonton a 2-1 lead with 1:09 left in the first.
Edmonton added to their lead 6:30 into the second period when a Nugent-Hopkins pass hit Pavelski’s stick and got past Jones.
San Jose got that goal right back, though, as a Tomas Hertl shot deflected off Meier and in.
Maroon’s ninth of the season restored the Oilers’ two-goal edge eight minutes into the third.
San Jose kept coming and made it 4-3 with eight minutes left as Sorensen made a nice deke to record his second goal.
But Strome iced the win with an empty-netter.
There was a comical moment when Maroon playfully tugged on Sharks’ defenceman Brent Burns beard a few times after the pair had gotten tangled on the ice behind the San Jose net.
“I thought he would be mad at first, but he just asked me if I liked it and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a pretty nice beard,'” Maroon noted.
Elsewhere, L.A. beat Philadelphia 4-1, New Jersey downed Anaheim 5-3, Boston dumped Columbus 7-2, and Colorado doubled Pittsburgh 4-2.
