The Oilers trailed 3-2 to the Coyotes after 40 minutes on Monday before a shuffling to their lines by the coaching staff in the second intermission helped sparked a four-goal third period that was led by Evander Kane’s two goals and pairs of assists from Leon Draisaitl, Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard.
“I don’t want to get in the habit of changing things up, but I think the way we got outplayed in the second period, we were slow to pucks. They really carried the play in the second period, and we just needed a little something to change things up.”
Draisaitl finished with a goal and two assists playing out the final period with Kane and Ryan McLeod, who had the primary helper on Kane’s second goal, and Zach Hyman scored the game-winner alongside Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
“We were a little slow in the second period, spent a little bit too much time in our own end, and in order to win this hockey game we knew we had to come out and play,” Kane said. “I thought we did a great job of getting on top of them a little quicker and being a little bit more connected on our forecheck, and it led us to scoring opportunities.”
After sitting too far back defensively during the middle frame and allowing a young Coyotes team to run unopposed in the Oilers zone, Edmonton showed plenty of urgency over the final period and a level of patience that was a good reminder to the group that when things aren’t going their direction, they have the tools and the team to turn things around.
“I think it’s just when things aren’t going our way or we don’t have our best game going, just stay composed and don’t panic knowing if we hang around long enough and get our game in order, we can pull it out,” Kane said. “And that was a good example of doing that this afternoon.”