It was touted as a celebrity showdown, however neither Connor McDavid nor Sidney Crosby might discover the scoresheet within the Edmonton Oilers’ conflict towards the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday evening.
As an alternative, Stuart Skinner made 27 saves for his fifth profession shutout, and Viktor Arvidsson had a standout efficiency with three assists — his first factors as an Oiler — as Edmonton snapped a two-game dropping skid with a 4-0 victory over the Penguins.
“We performed on each side of the puck actually good at present for 60 minutes,” Arvidsson mentioned. “I feel that was an important assertion recreation. I feel that’s how we have now to play and the way we’re going to be good.”
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Oilers defenceman Mattias Ekholm, who was a teammate of Arvidsson’s in Nashville, mentioned it was nice to see him lastly get some factors.
“That’s the Viktor I do know,” he mentioned. “He’s at all times the toughest working (man) on the market, he’ll beat you out for icing and is a ache within the ass to play towards. I assumed he had a extremely large evening.
“He’s getting increasingly snug each evening that he will get to play right here and get chemistry together with his linemates and I feel tonight he confirmed what he can actually do. Kudos to him, he actually performed a stable evening.”
Ekholm and Evan Bouchard every had a objective and an help.
“I assumed simply throughout, begin to end we simply performed a extremely stable recreation,” Skinner mentioned. “It began with the D-zone clearly, and from there we had been in a position to capitalize on some offence. And that’s usually the way it begins for us, after we are stable within the D-zone we get a number of probabilities. Within the first interval, I had 5 photographs and every part was from the skin, so simply an incredible staff effort.”
Regardless of the loss, Joel Blomqvist was very sturdy in web for the Penguins, making 46 stops.
“He continued to battle, he noticed some actually attractiveness, odd-man rushes and I assumed he hung in there saved competing,” Crosby mentioned. “They’ve some harmful shooters and he did an important job hanging in there for us.”
Blomqvist was enjoying in simply his fifth NHL recreation.
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