McDavid has career-high 6 assists, Oilers score 8 in win against Red Wings

EDMONTON -- Connor McDavid had a career-high six assists, including his 600th in the NHL, and extended his home point streak to 19 games for the Edmonton Oilers in an 8-4 win against the Detroit Red Wings at Rogers Place on Tuesday.

It was McDavid’s second career six-point game (Nov. 14, 2019). He has 12 goals and 33 assists during his home point streak.

“I think his stats sheet says it all: Six assists, plus-6, no power-play time and he was skating,” Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch said. “He was one of the few guys who was skating for a full 60 minutes, and the plays that he made tonight were pretty phenomenal.

“If he’s not on top of his game, we’re probably not winning that one.”

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had two goals and an assist, and Evan Bouchard had a goal and two assists for the Oilers (31-17-1), who scored five goals in the third period and have won 18 of their past 20 games. Stuart Skinner made 34 saves.

“I thought we had a couple lucky ones,” McDavid said. “I think the first one was a little lucky. ‘Nuge’ makes a great play on one, Nuge makes a good play on a couple. I play with some good players, obviously, and tonight was a good night.”

Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane and David Perron each had a goal and an assist for the Red Wings (27-19-6), who won 10 of their previous 14. Ville Husso, who was returning from an injury to make his first start since Dec. 18, stopped six shots of seven shots before leaving with a lower-body injury at 8:48 of the first period.

“I don’t know if it’s the same injury, but it’s a lower-body injury,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “Unfortunately, he hurt himself previous to the goal, hence he was not able to move laterally on the goal. That’s very unfortunate for him, especially since he’s fought really hard to get back to this point.”

Alex Lyon, who started 15 of the previous 16 games for Detroit (10-3-2), allowed seven goals on 29 shots over the final 51:12.

“Unfortunately, unlike our previous six weeks where we had outstanding goaltending, that didn’t bail us out tonight,” Lalonde said. “It’s going to be a frustrating game to watch back, because we did a lot of good things to get a game like that to 3-3. To let it slip away, it’s a little frustrating. The bottom line is too much easy offense, not a lot of it, but too much easy offense for a team that doesn’t need easy offense.”

Leon Draisaitl gave Edmonton a 1-0 lead at 8:48 into the first period, taking the puck from the boards all the way across to the top of the left circle before sending a wrist shot past the blocker of Husso.

Cody Ceci made it 2-0 at 11:05 with a wrist shot from the blue line that hit off the skate of Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider and went through the legs of Lyon. It was his first goal of the season.

“I wasn't sure. There were a couple of guys in front, so I kind of went and asked,” said Ceci, who also had an assist. “It ended up being mine. … [McDavid] won us the game. He played unbelievable. I think he was a little mad that he got shut out last game (a 4-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday), and he showed it tonight. He came out with some fire and played unbelievable. I've never seen that before.”

DeBrincat cut it to 2-1 at 15:39 on the power play, scoring on a one-timer from below the left face-off dot.

Bouchard extended it to 3-1 at 10:17 of the second period after taking a centering pass from Nugent-Hopkins out of the corner.

Joe Veleno made it 3-2 at 11:24 with another power-play goal, banking the puck in tight off of Ceci.

Patrick Kane tied it 3-3 at 14:30 when he received a cross-crease feed from J.T. Compher and beat Skinner glove side.

“The amount of odd-man rushes we gave up were the month of January all combined in one period,” Knoblauch said. “So, we got a little bit better at that. Obviously, the goal scoring was there tonight, but the defensive details need to be better.”

Dylan Holloway scored 44 seconds into the third period to put Edmonton back ahead 4-3. He dove to tap in the rebound off Bouchard's shot that bounced off the glove of Lyon. 

Nugent-Hopkins made it 5-3 at 3:27 with a shot from the slot that passed through the legs of Seider and past Lyon’s blocker.

Zach Hyman pushed it to 6-3 at 12:55 on a rebound, and Evander Kane scored 46 seconds later off a spinning pass from McDavid to extend it to 7-3.

Perron made it 7-4 at 15:10 by redirecting a shot by Ben Chiarot.

Nugent-Hopkins scored at 17:49 off McDavid’s sixth assist for the 8-4 final.

“We just lost it in the third, which is really disappointing,” Seider said. “Up to that point, I thought we had the better chances, we were rolling and, in the end, it’s a devastating result with a lot of mistakes we have [to] correct. It’s still a long road trip (Detroit was playing the first of a four-game road trip) and hopefully we can flip the switch here pretty quick.

“When you make those kind of mistakes against the top players in the world, they make you pay for it. Definitely we learned our lesson today.”

NOTES: McDavid is the fourth-fastest player in NHL history to reach 600 assists (616 games), behind Wayne Gretzky (416), Mario Lemieux (514) and Bobby Orr (608). McDavid joined Kris Letang as the only players to have six assists in a game this season (against the New York Islanders on Dec. 27). … Only two players in NHL history have recorded more assists in a game: Gretzky had seven on three different occasions, and Billy Taylor had seven assists for the Red Wings in 1947.