Oilers enter holiday break on an NHL tear

Oilers hot heading into break The Edmonton Oilers are one of the hottest teams heading into the NHL heading into a holiday break. Evan Kenny reports.

It was a year ago Sunday when the Edmonton Oilers had won their second game in a row after losing the previous three outings.

Little did they know that the Dec. 22, 2023, win over the New York Rangers was No. 2 of 16 straight wins, a streak that ran a month and a half and fell shy of the National Hockey League record by just one.

That Friday night a year ago saw the Oilers sitting well back of the post-season pack, five points behind the Arizona Coyotes for the final Western Conference wildcard seed in 12th place with a record of 15-15-1. It was 18 games into Kris Knoblauch’s tenure as head coach after he replaced Jay Woodcroft on Nov. 12, 2023, when the Oilers had stumbled to a 3-9-1 start to the season.

By the end of the regular season, the Oilers finished second in the Pacific Division – five points behind the first-place Vancouver Canucks – with 49 wins and 104 points.

And, oh yeah, they took their NHL playoff run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.

Knoblauch said the trials the Oilers have experienced, whether last season with him as bench boss or beforehand, have benefited them.

“We learned a lot from last year, whether it was through the regular season, definitely the experience that we had through the playoffs, but even prior to that, you think about before I got here, the playoff runs that they had, the matchups they had, the heartbreaking losses and the times they were on winning streaks, whatever it is, but the more games you have, there’s a lot of importance on just experience,” Knoblauch told media after Edmonton’s 3-1 win Sunday over the visiting Ottawa Senators.

“We’ve got a lot of games played in that room, so they’ve got a lot of experience, and all that experience helps out handling mostly adversity.”

The victory was the 11th in their last 13 games. The Oilers (21-11-2) sit in second place in the Pacific heading into Monday’s NHL action among 26 teams.

Winger Zach Hyman, who continued a scoring tear on Sunday with at least one goal for the sixth game in a row, said the Oilers are “doing (their) best” to win and to limit losses.

“We’ve been doing a pretty good job at that lately. The way that we’ve been playing in all ends of the ice has been very consistent,” said Hyman, who’s scored 10 goals in his last nine games and now has 13 on the season to go with six assists for 19 points in 29 games played.

The Oilers started a five-day break over the holidays on Monday. The entire league takes a break on Tuesday through Thursday. Edmonton returns to action on Saturday in Los Angeles (2 p.m. MT).

“(We’re) heading into the break just trying to relax a bit, kick the legs up for a bit, so that we can feel rested coming into the rest of the season,” Hyman said.