Connor McDavid is not the only youngster at the Edmonton Oilers making an impact right now.
Leon Draisaitl scored his 10th goal of the season 3 minutes, 16 seconds into overtime as Edmonton came away with a 3-2 victory over the visiting Anaheim Ducks on Saturday.
The 21-year-old has seven goals and 13 points in his past 10 games.
“There is a lot of talk about what Connor does and that is pretty evident, but I think we are seeing another young guy really emerge as a go-to guy in Leon,” Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. “I told him on the bench to be the best player on the ice, you don’t have to be the second best. He responded with the winning goal. I was happy for him.”
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Drake Caggiula also scored for the Oilers, who have won two in a row.
“It’s obviously a big win for us,” German Draisaitl said. “The race is really tight in our conference right now. All the teams up there have the same amount of points, it feels like. Beating a team that we are up against, it’s huge.”
Jordan Eberle assisted on all three Oilers goals.
Ryan Kesler and Rickard Rakell replied for the Ducks, who had a three-game winning streak snapped.
“Any loss is tough. It was a good job fighting back, it was a bit of a let-down that we couldn’t get the second point,” said Ducks goalie John Gibson, who added that he has no explanation for his team’s difficulty in overtime, having lost five games that way this season.
“We want to take pride in every game we play and obviously we haven’t had the success we want in overtime. Still a lot of time left, so hopefully we can turn it around,” he said.
It was pretty even through the scoreless first period, with Anaheim putting eight shots on Cam Talbot and the Oilers getting seven on Gibson.
The Oilers took the lead on a power play five minutes into the second period when Patrick Maroon fed a puck through to Caggiula and he got Gibson going the wrong way to record his first NHL goal.
The Ducks responded midway through the middle frame with a power-play goal of their own, as Kesler swept in a puck from the doorstep for his ninth of the season.
Edmonton regained the lead with 6:25 to play in the second period when Nugent-Hopkins stepped in from the point and beat Gibson with a wrist-shot from the top of the circle a second after a power play expired. It was his fourth of the year.
The Ducks tied it again midway through the third as a shot deflected out front to Rakell, who put his team-leading 10th goal of the season into an open net.
Talbot had to be especially solid for the remainder of the third to push the game into overtime, when Draisaitl took a feed in front from Andrej Sekera and scored to secure the win.
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