PREVIEW: Oilers at Kings
LOS ANGELES, CA – Stay committed and stay the course.
The Edmonton Oilers look to extend their win streak to four games on Friday night in a challenging Pacific Division matchup at Crypto.com Arena against the Los Angeles Kings, who own a 20-8-4 record this season and have allowed a league-best 79 goals through 32 games with an average of 2.34 goals against per game.
“We’ve just got to keep building and LA is going to be a really good matchup,” defenceman Vincent Desharnais said. “We’ve got to be ready. We know from playoffs last year that they’re a very good team.
“They’re well-coached, well-structured, so we got to make sure to play a full 60 minutes.”
Coming out of the holiday break on Thursday, the Oilers scored four goals in the first period against the Sharks and received 25 saves from Stuart Skinner in a 5-0 shutout victory that pushed their win streak to three games and overall record to 16-15-1.
Skinner provided steady goalkeeping to earn his fourth career shutout, and Ryan McLeod registered a goal and assist to stretch his streak of multi-point games to three (4G, 2A) for the first time in his career.
Zach Hyman contributed two points along with Evan Bouchard and Darnell Nurse, while the winger also reached the 20-goal mark in the victory by finishing off McDavid’s back-door feed on a two-on-two at 10:15 of Edmonton’s four-goal first period.
“It was huge. It gave me a lot of confidence,” Skinner said of the fast start. “It’s always nice kind of getting that early lead. I think we were rolling around for five minutes straight in their end and that’s a huge credit to the guys for being ready off the bat. It can be hard, especially coming off Christmas break.”