GAME STORY: Oilers 7, Flames 1

EDMONTON, AB - Connor McDavid. That is all.
The Oilers captain scored his eighth-career regular season hat-trick and had five total points as the Oilers swept their back-to-back against the Flames with a dominant 7-1 decision.

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POST-GAME RAW | McDavid
POST-GAME RAW | Nugent-Hopkins
POST-GAME RAW | Koskinen

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FIRST BLOOD

The Oilers got the first power play of the night and converted for the first goal of the night with 17 seconds left in the man advantage as Leon Draisaitl found McDavid with a cross-ice pass and the captain fired a perfect feed to the stick of Alex Chiasson parked in front for a tap-in on Jacob Markstrom for his third of the season.

PLAY OF THE GAME

McDavid's second goal and fourth point of the night was the stuff of legends as he picked the pocket of Noah Hanifin along the boards in the neutral zone, kicked the puck up to his stick and entered the attacking area in a one-on-one scenario with Chris Tanev. McDavid then shifted his eyes to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins who was trailing the play and didn't look away but still managed to snipe one past Markstrom and score his 11th of the year.

SAVE OF THE GAME

Mikko Koskinen had himself a solid Saturday with 43 saves, and his best stop of the night came five minutes into the final frame when former teammate Milan Lucic got free for a shot in front but the Oilers netminder got a piece of the attempt with his glove to further stymie the frustrated Flames.

TURNING POINT

After the Oilers jumped out to a 2-0 lead, Andrew Mangiapane's power-play marker at 7:54 cut the Flames deficit to 2-1, but McDavid re-established the two-goal cushion with a PPG of his own at 17:11 for his first of three tallies. The captain redirected Tyson Barrie's point shot past a helpless Markstrom to give Edmonton a 3-1 lead through 20 minutes.

TOP PERFORMER

McDavid further cemented his spot atop the NHL scoring race as his phenomenal five-point performance brought him up to 37 in just 20 games. He sits seven points up on Draisaitl and Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner in the race for the Art Ross Trophy.

FACT CHECK

McDavid is the third player in Oilers franchise history to record multiple career hat-tricks against the Flames, joining Glenn Anderson and Craig MacTavish. McDavid also now has two natural hat-tricks, both of which have come in Battle of Alberta matchups. The first was the 2017-18 season opener.
Darnell Nurse made some franchise history as well, playing 32:52 to record the highest time on ice total for an Oilers player in a regulation game since ice time started getting tracked.

NEXT UP

From back-to-back battles against their provincial rivals to two in a row against their other usual division foes, the Oilers will head west to Vancouver for games against the Canucks on Tuesday and Thursday before starting a seven-game homestand a week from tonight against the Maple Leafs.

PARTING WORDS

"It's hard to describe... there's not anybody out there like him," Nugent-Hopkins said of McDavid's five-point performance. "He drove the game for us right from the start and we followed along. I thought he was solid all night. It's fun to watch and fun to be a part of."

"You have some nights when the puck just goes in for you and you don't feel that good, and you have nights where you feel amazing and it just doesn't go," McDavid said of his seventh-career five-point game, putting him alone in fourth in team history. "Hockey is a crazy game like that. I felt good tonight and it went in for me, but I thought our team played really well."
"There are some nights where the puck just seems to follow him around, and when he has the puck great things happen," Head Coach Dave Tippett said of McDavid. "That was the case tonight."
"We played a pretty solid game all over the ice and didn't give them much," said Koskinen, whose 43 saves were a season high. "Especially we didn't give them odd-man rushes, which is important."