Revived Edmonton Oilers need just eight minutes to bury Winnipeg Jets

What do you get when you cross how the Edmonton Oilers played against the Minnesota Wild and how the Edmonton Oilers played against the Seattle Kraken?

The Winnipeg Jets just discovered the answer, but don’t bother asking them what it is. Their whole team is in concussion protocol and probably can’t remember much of anything after the beating they took Saturday night.

Edmonton combined the staunch defence that just held Minnesota to one goal and the lethal offence that just dropped nine goals on the Kraken and made a mockery out of the first opponent to see them play at this level.

At least it was a quick kill. Edmonton held the Jets down for three periods in the 6-2 win, but the game was over in less than eight minutes.

In about as perfect a first period as you’re ever going to see, Edmonton buried the Jets before they knew what hit them, scoring four goals and allowing just one shot in a span of 17 minutes and 30 seconds.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scoring at 3:00, Leon Draisaitl at 4:37, Matt Savoie at 7:24 and Evan Bouchard at 13:31. At this point, Edmonton had more goals than Winnipeg had shots.

“The first two periods were 10 out of 10,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “I loved a lot of things. Offensively, I thought we created a lot. We had confidence with the puck, we were moving it fast. And defensively, I don’t think we gave up very much in the first 40.”

At the end of the second period it was 5-0 and the Jets had been limited to nine shots. If you’re looking for the ideal blend of offence and defence, this was it.

“I think the first 40 was probably the best we’ve played all year,” said Leon Draisaitl. ““We’re always going to have the skill to put the puck in the net, but if we give up less and overwhelm teams with our speed and how clean we are with the puck, that makes our team what we are.”

This week marks the first time the Oilers have won two in a row in nearly a month and the first time they’ve won two in a row in regulation since the second and third games of the season.

But evidence that the Oilers are turning their fortunes around continues to mount. This makes 3-1 in their last four games (with 18 goals in the three wins) and three games in the last four in which they’ve allowed one or fewer goals, including that 1-0 loss to Minny.

“It’s what you what you want to see, how you want to respond,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. “It just comes down to sticking to it and not getting frustrated. We had some good looks in that Minny game that didn’t go in and then we kind of exploded the other night and followed up on it. A lot of things to like tonight.”

As for the goals against, it’s a chicken and egg loop that true for almost all teams — the better you play defensively, the better your goalies look.

“Early on in the year there were a lot of goals that fell on us as a group in front of them,” said Draisaitl. “That’s certainly frustrating for them. The last couple of games they’ve been really, really good.”

IN DEFENCE OF THE JETS

Winnipeg was playing the second game of back-to-back games, their fourth game in six nights, and didn’t have their most valuable player, goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, while the well-rested Oilers are on a cozy home stand.

The Oilers just emerged from a brutal travel schedule of their own that left them struggling to keep their heads above water and now that they’ve had some time to catch their breath the difference in their game is striking.

“The only time we had off was when we were on a plane travelling across multiple time zones,” said Knoblauch. “Right now, it’s a bit of a luxury that we’ve been able to practice, we’ve been able to work on things and we’ve also been able to give guys rest when they needed it.”

FOUR SCORE

Nice night for the fourth line with Curtis Lazar scoring in the second period and David Tomasek in the third. Tomasek was playing his first game back after missing the previous three as a healthy scratch.

“It was nice to see those guys get a couple of goals and for Trent (Frederic) it was one of his better games this year,” said Knoblauch. “It’s nice to get some secondary scoring, we haven’t had much of it lately. I’m very happy with that.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com