PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Rangers

The Edmonton Oilers will continue their three-game homestand at Rogers Place on Thursday night against the New York Rangers.

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PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Rangers

EDMONTON, AB – Here come the Blueshirts.

Continuing their three-game homestand at Rogers Place, the Edmonton Oilers will look to build on Tuesday’s five-goal middle frame in their 6-3 victory over the Utah Mammoth when they face the New York Rangers on Thursday night for the final time this regular season.

“The win aside, I think it was just good to see some good hockey there for a bit,” said captain Connor McDavid, who recorded two goals. “It had been a little bit since we've seen some of that, so it was good to see that for 40 minutes.”

Trailing 2-0 after 20 minutes against Utah, the Oilers came together in the intermission and came out for the second period with a concerted effort to simplify their game, or as defenceman Mattias Ekholm said more eloquently, “put on their work boots” to get back to playing the way they know they can following their slow start to their season and Tuesday night’s meeting with the Mammoth.

That singular focus paid off only 22 seconds into the middle frame after Leon Draisaitl set up Ekholm for a wide-open slap shot and his first goal of the season, opening the floodgates for the Oilers on a five-goal period and a strong comeback performance over the final 40 minutes against the Mammoth, who’d won seven straight games before Tuesday.

Isaac Howard notched his second career NHL goal 2:51 later to tie the game, before Leon Draisaitl and Ty Emberson scored 37 seconds apart in the last half of the middle frame, which they each put away in the right circle to make it 4-3 after Barrett Hayton temporarily restored Utah's lead earlier in the period.

McDavid made it a two-goal contest with 2:04 left in the frame, then added an empty-netter in the final three minutes of regulation to seal Edmonton's come-from-behind 6-3 victory over Utah in front of 20 saves from a resilient Stuart Skinner in between the pipes.

"It starts with Leon getting the puck in the first period and driving it down and finding Ekky coming in," said Head Coach Kris Knoblauch on Wednesday. "That gave us a little bit of energy and a boost. Every time we came into the zone, we were looking to make a play and score. It's nice if it's there, but if they're checking you well and there's no space, unfortunately, you just have to put it in a place where you can establish a forecheck and try and work to get it back.

For the bench boss, the Oilers got back to basics in the last 40 minutes after turnovers resulted in most of their mistakes in the first period.

"We just shot ourselves in the foot way too many times, and we just had to defend the entire period, where if we were playing a little simpler, we wouldn't have to do that," he said. "I think in the second and third periods, we played a simpler game. We didn't turn the puck over. We made them defend. When you make the other team defend, it's just such an easier game to play."

The Oilers will be hoping that sense of simplicity can carry over to Thursday's meeting with the Rangers, who were shut out by the Oilers just over two weeks ago in a 2-0 defeat at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 14.

"I think you just saw a little bit of the urgency, and that desperation went up, which you didn't see a lot of in the first 10 minutes," McDavid said. "So hopefully, that can stick around. I thought the game was simpler. We dumped in more pucks, went to the net a little bit more, and shot some pucks from the top. We were rewarded for doing that, so some good signs."

The Rangers are coming off a 2-0 shutout of their own on Tuesday against the Vancouver Canucks, improving to 4-1-1 on the road this season off goals from Mika Zibanejad and former Oilers forward Sam Carrick. Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner stole the show against the Rangers on Broadway during their last meeting by making 30 saves for the shutout, and they'll hope the 26-year-old can turn in another one of those composed performances on Thursday.

"The Rangers played us very difficult and we didn't have many scoring chances," Knoblauch recalled. "I think that a lot of that had to do with our puck play not being able to make passes or not skating the puck up the ice. Stu came up with a lot of big saves, and it was probably one game where maybe it could have gone the other way, but we expect Stu to pull those games out for us once in a while, and he did that night."

On Thursday, forward Adam Henrique will be honoured pre-game as the first player in franchise history to play in his 1,000th career NHL game in an Oilers uniform after reaching the milestone last Tuesday in a 3-2 overtime victory over the Ottawa Senators in the nation's capital.