GAME RECAP: Canucks 5, Oilers 2

EDMONTON, AB - The Vancouver Canucks came from behind by a pair of goals on Friday night to defeat the Edmonton Oilers 5-2 at Rogers Place before the start of the holiday break.
Canucks forward Bo Horvat had two goals and two assists, with the Canucks captain netting the game-winner with seven-and-a-half minutes remaining in the third period to lift Vancouver into their first lead before adding an empty-net goal in the final minute of regulation.
"I mean, that's the question, right? That's the question of the game," captain Connor McDavid said about the Oilers play after holding a 2-0 lead in the first period. "We had a good start that we wanted and we cough it up. Obviously not the second period we wanted, but we still had a chance and have to find a way to win that game. There's just no way around it."
J.T. Miller added a pair of goals to help get the Canucks back to a .500 win percentage with back-to-back wins heading into the NHL's pause for the holidays. The Oilers enter the break with an 18-15-2 record and 38 points.
McDavid became the first player to reach 30 goals in the NHL this season off a nice passing play with Zach Hyman and Leon Draisaitl with five seconds left in the first period, reaching the mark for the seventh time in his career. Derek Ryan opened the scoring with his fifth of the campaign, beating Canucks netminder Collin Delia on a breakaway before the midway mark of the opening frame.
Edmonton resumes its schedule after the holiday break with the Battle of Alberta this coming Tuesday at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary.
"It doesn't matter who we play. It's a big game no matter who we're playing," McDavid said. "Obviously Calgary, we know the history there, so it's a big game for us. That's the bottom line."

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FIRST BLOOD

The first half of the first period was all Blue & Orange, so an opening goal was fitting for the start to the game that the Oilers had on Friday night.
After picking up an errant Canucks pass from below the Oilers goal line, Warren Foegele zipped a two-line pass up to a streaking Derek Ryan behind the Vancouver defence for a breakaway that the American put away on his forehand past a sliding Collin Delia at 9:42 of the opening frame.
It was Ryan's fifth of the season to hit the halfway mark of last year's tally of 10 that he hit in his first season in Edmonton.

PLAY OF THE GAME

Head Coach Jay Woodcroft rolled with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins centring their own lines for the second straight game on Friday, but mentioned pre-game how they'd react to real-time information to know when the time would be right to reunite the Dynamic Duo.
The 30th goal of the season for McDavid with less than five seconds on the clock in the opening period was the result of that forward thinking and an incredible passing play that came off a great keep-in by Brett Kulak at the blueline.

The Stony Plain product battled the puck down at the top of the Canucks zone and hit it down to Draisaitl at the halfboards, where the German tossed a backhand into the slot for Zach Hyman. On his forehand, Hyman slid a pass to the back post under the stick of Tyler Myers to McDavid, who calmly tapped his 30th goal of the season into an empty cage.
McDavid becomes the first player in the NHL to 30 goals this season -- the seventh time that the captain has reached the mark in his career. He's the first member of the Oilers since Wayne Gretzky in 1986 to score 30 goals prior to Christmas and the first NHL player to hit 30 ahead of Dec. 25 since Alex Ovechkin in 2013, who just passed Gordie Howe tonight for second all-time with his 802nd career goal.

CANUCKS CRASH WAVES

Doesn't matter how, it just matters that it did. J.T. Miller can attest for the Canucks.
Without a goal in 12 games, Miller broke the schneid with a lucky one after his shot from the slot was parried into the sky by Stuart Skinner before the puck came down and bounced in off his back and into the net to halve the Oilers lead to 2-1 just 41 seconds into the middle frame.
Before the period was done, Miller had his second to tie the game at two by finishing off a loose puck that came off a circle shot from Elias Pettersson on the power play. It was a sequence of unfortunate events for the Oilers after Miller's goal came off a partial short-handed breakaway for McDavid at the other end that saw the captain seemingly get taken down by Canucks defenceman Quinn Hughes.
"I thought we played a good first period," Woodcroft said. "Lots of things went according to what we wanted to have happen, then we gave up a goal in the first minute of the second period. We took two o-zone penalties. We were unable to score on our power-play chances and we killed off three minutes and 56 seconds, but not the full four minutes one of their power plays."

TURNING POINT

It's a 60-minute game, and the Canucks did what they had to do to wade through the difficult parts of the game and come through with a critical late goal.
With just 7:35 left in regulation, a point shot from Myers careemed off the back boards and out the other side for Horvat, whose stick wasn't picked up in time by Nugent-Hopkins to stop the Canucks captain from burying the go-ahead goal and completing the comeback for Vancouver from 2-0 down in the first period. Ilya Mikheyev then potted insurance with 2:41 remaining, snapping a shot under the glove of Skinner for the 4-2 lead, before Horvat added an empty-netter in the last minute.
"Heading into the third period, it was game on and we made a mistake on a breakout that ended up in the back of our net," Woodcroft said.
"I think we're beyond the point of moral victories. We have expectations to have effort every night and we just thought our execution (was off) and we made too many mistakes as the game wore on."

PARTING WORDS

McDavid on the Oilers having an identical record at Christmas to last season (18-15-2):
"Well, I would say last year we got off to a racing start and then fell off a cliff halfway through, and that's kind of how we ended up here. And I would say this time around we've just kind of gone up and down and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster, so two different ways to get to the same record."
Coach Woodcroft on Edmonton's struggles at home with a 9-9-1 record and dropping winnable games:
"Yeah, you go to teams below us in the standings, but I go to every game this season has been competitive. Do we want to have a better home record? Yeah, we do. We want to make the people of Edmonton proud and play with a level of execution and passion in front of them. Tonight, I thought we played hard. We got the lead, but were unable to sustain it. So to not be able to do that at home is certainly frustrating for everybody. We're looking to improve that record as we move on."
Hyman on the Oilers not being able to carry their success from Wednesday into tonight:
"It's talked about in the morning. It's something where you talk about and you say, 'this is the way that you need to play', and then it's different when you got to go out there and execute it. You can say all the right things, tell your guys all the right things, 'we're going to do this, we're going to do that', but at the end of the day, you've got the eye test out there. You can watch, you can see what happens, and clearly we weren't good enough. We had a good start, but I think we faded a little bit."