PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Maple Leafs

The Edmonton Oilers look to build on their franchise-record 10-game win streak on Tuesday night in a tough all-Canadian contest at Rogers Place against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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PREVIEW: Oilers vs. Maple Leafs

EDMONTON, AB – When the Buds are in the building, it’s always guaranteed to be an electric atmosphere.

Even when there isn’t a 10-game win streak on the line.

The Oilers look to continue building on their franchise record for consecutive wins on Tuesday night when they host the Toronto Maple Leafs in a charged-up atmosphere inside Rogers Place that’ll be sparked by the well-represented fanbases on both sides of the all-Canadian matchup.

“As far as in the building, we know our fans will be louder,” forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “They always are and you want to put the other ones to bed and have a good game for the ones that show up for us. It's just going to happen when you play a team like Toronto or Montreal.”

“As far as the game goes, we just want to keep the same mindset and understand they have some guys who are game-breakers that can make you pay if you make mistakes. But the main focus is in here.”

Edmonton set a new franchise record with their 10^th straight victory on Saturday, winning their second consecutive game in overtime by defeating the Montreal Canadiens 2-1 on Evan Bouchard’s power-play winner to reach a mark that wasn’t met once by any of the team’s five Stanley Cup-winning rosters during the 1980s.

“A lot of us thought that they probably would’ve had a few more than ten, so it's exciting for us," Nugent-Hopkins said. "But at the same time, we still want to keep pushing and keep getting better and striving for more."

The Oilers swept their previous three-game road trip against Chicago, Detroit and Montreal with a tight-checking and patient game over the 60 minutes of each win that involved relying on their solid goaltending, team defending and the penalty kill to keep things tight in one-goal scenarios before they found clutch goalscoring down the stretch to climb the win streak to 10 games.

With a 20-6-0 record under Head Coach Kris Knoblauch, the Blue & Orange have rebounded from a challenging start to their 2023-24 NHL season by going from 2-9-1 and 30th overall in the NHL on Nov. 12 to now being three points out of third place in the Pacific Division at 21-15-1 record.

"I think just an emphasis on playing a full 60 minutes," Zach Hyman said. "I think when you get down, you have no more room for error, so you have to make sure that you play really well defensively and that includes a lot of things.

"I think it all starts with our goaltending and obviously, Stu and Picks have been playing phenomenal. I think our D-core has been playing great. I think our forwards have been really helping and tracking back and trying to limit those errors, so it's not one thing – it's a culmination of a bunch of things that we've had to clean up because our season was really on the line there for a little bit."

The Leafs have done the reverse of the Oilers in recent games by losing three straight in come-from-behind fashion for the first time since April of 2021 after holding multi-goal leads in each of those defeats – most recently on home ice in 5-3 and 4-2 losses to the Colorado Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings.

Toronto has been a much better team on the road this season with an 11-3-6 record in comparison to 10-9-1 at Scotiabank Arena, with their .176 points percentage difference between their home and away records this season being the second largest behind the Los Angeles Kings (.225) in the NHL.

Zach Hyman, a Toronto native and former Maple Leafs forward of six seasons, has become one of the indispensable leaders on the Oilers whose efforts have culminated in an exceptional season so far as Edmonton's leading goalscorer with 26 goals in 38 games – a staggering 55-goal pace that's kept him close to his former Leafs linemate in Auston Matthews, who has 33.

Both Hyman and Matthews have a trio of hat tricks this season, making them the only players in the NHL with three in 2023-24.

The winger forms a part of one of the NHL's most deadly lines with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and while he's certainly benefitted from the talent around him, the 31-year-old has no doubt taken massive leaps this season to become an even bigger target for the likes of McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, and Draisaitl and put himself into the same discussion as all the players mentioned above.

"When you're a worker and you work like he does, whether you're 25, 28, or whatever it is, you improve," Assistant Coach Glen Gulutzan said. "You improve playing with great players and getting lots of touches, and if you're a student of the game and a guy that works at it, you're going to improve even more. So I think it's been a progression of improvement, but based on how hard Hymsy works."