FEATURE: California Cruisin'

LOS ANGELES, CA – After cruising through California, there's still plenty of gas in the tank.

If you’re the Edmonton Oilers, nothing beats an early five-game win streak and a clean sweep of a three-game California road trip to show you’re on the right path to setting the framework for how you want to play as a team.

Then, there’s doing it all the way until April (and hopefully beyond), which is a challenge they’re showing they’re ready for after all their hard early-season work in building the foundation of their game paid off in a clean sweep of the Ducks, Sharks, and Kings – allowing only four goals (two on the power play) and showing they're a much more defensively responsible team that still knows how to score plenty of goals.

All that despite knowing they still have plenty to clean up.

The message delivered by Head Coach Mike Babcock was consistent throughout the road trip, as exemplified in his post-game message that was captured by Oilers TV after beating the Ducks, where the bench boss spoke to the positives and emphasized the need for them to keep improving at the little things that matter most.

“It’s always easy to crack a little bit, but when you believe in who you are and what you do, you can keep doing it night after night,” Babcock said in his post-game speech. “And guys, we’re just getting started. We’re going to get a lot better, I promise you that.”

For Connor McDavid, the proof is in the details after his goal & three assists helped lead the Oilers to a 4-1 win over Los Angeles, marking his 800^th career game and being one of a handful of terrific individual performances that have been vital to their early-season success as the NHL’s only team without a regulation loss as of Oct. 13.

“I notice I see a team that's upbeat; I see a team that's energetic, has speed, is aggressive and wins a lot of puck battles,” he said. “Those are all great things, and if you do those things night after night, you're going to put together some wins.”

The captain knows it won't be a work of art every night, but they’ve proven that even when mistakes happen, they can rely on their structure as a hard team to play against in their own zone, while also having the offence and goaltending that can win games on their own.

And just as Babcock said, they’re only going to improve.

"It's a hard-working group," McDavid added. "It wasn't an oil painting tonight for sure, but [Levi] did a great job of holding us in there. We got off to a good start and kind of held that all the way through. It wasn't the prettiest for 40 there, but a win's a win. It's a good road trip and we're in a nice spot.

The Oilers were tested in the first 20 minutes of their road trip opener on Oct. 8 when the Ducks led 2-0 on a pair of power-play goals from Beckett Sennecke, only to lock it down against their Pacific Division rivals by allowing only 15 shots the rest of the way and scoring five unanswered goals in the second period.

"After the first, we're like, 'You know what, what could possibly go more wrong, so just go out there and start working,' and we did," defenceman Mattias Ekholm said. "We got a good start, right off the bat, with a big goal, first shift, and just kept on plugging away from there." 

The brief taste of adversity saw the Oilers bend but not break, delivering the response they needed on both sides of the puck in the final 40 minutes, and their confidence only grew from there. McDavid, Draisaitl, and Bouchard combined for 10 points in the win.

"That's a good team over there, let's not get ahead of ourselves here," Draisaitl said after defeating the Ducks. "But, when you feel that you don't have your legs, you feel like you're getting pushed into your own end by their speed a little bit — and we're all men, we all want to be better, we want to be at our best — and I thought we pushed back hard and we did it the right way."

A dive into a meeting with the Sharks on Oct. 10 returned a low-event 3-1 win for the Oilers, who needed to stay patient for their chances while their team commitment to defence helped solidify the area around Tristan Jarry’s crease, needing him to make only 19 saves.

"I think we played a simple game,” Jarry said in San Jose. “I think when things weren't going our way, or they were clogging the middle, we weren't getting frustrated with it, and it shows a lot of character."

Edmonton needed to lean on Levi to make a career-high 39 saves in a concluding 4-1 win over Los Angeles on Oct. 13 after the Kings mounted their strongest push during the second period, but there was no panic from the Oilers despite their shots being more than doubled at 40-17 by the time the final buzzer sounded.

“Honestly, it's pretty impressive how we're able to score and also play a really solid defensive game,” goalie Devon Levi said. “The message that Babs is sending is that we have better, but if that's our bad game, which was a great game, I think we'll take that any day.”

The Oilers are set to receive bodies back in the coming days and weeks, including veterans Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and goaltender Frederik Andersen.

All of these reasons have the Oilers feeling confident about where they’re going.

“We're going to start getting some players back, and we're going to get way deeper and way harder to play against, and that's a positive thing for us,” Babcock said.

“Life's pretty good, so let's get back to Edmonton, regroup, get a few bodies back and get playing.”