Draisaitl, Oilers continue hot start with win against Kraken

EDMONTON -- Leon Draisaitl had two goals and two assists for the Edmonton Oilers in a 5-2 win against the Seattle Kraken at Rogers Place on Monday.

Duncan Keith scored his first goal for Edmonton (7-1-0), which has won two straight. Mikko Koskinen made 27 saves.
"I think it speaks to the depth of our group that we can win in different ways," Draisaitl said. "We can win on the power play, we can win with special teams in general, our goalie can steal one, defensemen are chipping in, our third line has won us games, so there's all types of different ways that we can win a game. That's a pretty great asset to have on a team."
Jaden Schwartz and Carson Soucy scored, and Joey Daccord made 18 saves for Seattle (3-6-1), which was playing the second of a back-to-back following a 3-1 loss to the New York Rangers on Sunday.
"We had good chances tonight. We had good chances off the rush and off of some good offensive zone opportunities, and a couple that went off posts (three) and one through the crease," Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. "That's the way it's gone for us the last couple of nights, but we have to push and find ways to change that. We pushed real hard the last two nights. I look at tonight, and typically in back-to-backs, I thought we started a little bit slow, it took us seven or eight minutes to get our legs going. Once we did, I liked the end of the first and the second-period push was excellent."
Draisaitl gave the Oilers a 1-0 lead at 2:12 of the first period when a pass from Tyson Barrie redirected in off his left skate.
"I thought Drasaitl's line (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Kailer Yamamoto) was really good, I thought Keith and [Cody] Ceci were good, and I thought Mikko was good," Oilers coach Dave Tippett said. "We won; we were opportunistic. We capitalized on some chances and we found a way to get two points."

Schwartz tied it 1-1 at 4:09, beating Koskinen five-hole with a backhand after splitting between Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard, but Draisaitl made it 2-1 at 6:01 with a power-play goal.
"It's frustrating, the last game was right there for us and so was tonight," Schwartz said. "They were opportunistic to start. We had a lot of good chances, a lot of good looks, and we just have to find ways to put them in the back of the net, get hungrier around the net, and our power play has to start executing better for us and getting us on the board and getting us more momentum. We keep losing the special teams battles, which doesn't help. There's positives that we're doing well, and we have to do it well and we have to start finding ways to win."
Keith, who was playing his 1,200th NHL game, scored at 1:47 of the second period to extend the lead to 3-1, getting to a loose puck in front of the net during a delayed penalty. Connor McDavid had the secondary assist on the play to extend his season-opening point streak to eight games (seven goals, 10 assists).
"It was nice, there were a couple of good players with the assists (Draisaitl and McDavid), so it was pretty special," Keith said. "I don't think it was our best game overall, but good teams find a way to win, and we did that tonight. I'm just proud and grateful to be part of this organization, they've been welcoming since Day One."

Soucy cut it to 3-2 at 18:40 of the second with a shot from the high slot off a pass from Nathan Bastian.
Kyle Turris tapped in a centering pass from Devin Shore to make it 4-2 at 2:57 of the third period, and Yamamoto scored his first of the season at 12:22 for the 5-2 final.
"Any time you start the season without a goal in the first seven games, you start to worry about it a little bit," Yamamoto said. "They were telling me it was coming, and it finally came. It was just a really good pass by Leon, and I got a partial breakaway and found the five-hole."