Chicago Blackhawks beat Edmonton Oilers 4-1
Patrick Kane lit the lamp twice as the Chicago Blackhawks managed a convincing 4-1 win over the struggling Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night.
Bryan Bickell and Patrick Sharp both also found the net for Chicago, who have lost four of their last five games, and won for the sixth straight time in Edmonton. Corey Crawford turned away 23 shots in the winning effort.
Chicago forward Jonathan Toews was pleased with his team's performance but urged his team-mates to improve further. He said, "Good to get a win. We needed that one, obviously. Still a lot of things we need to get better at. Once we get our power play going
and we get some bounces going our way, we can maybe open some games up and get a little more confidence in the offensive zone."
Jordan Eberle provided the lone offense for Edmonton, who beat the Nashville Predators in their last game, but were unable to turn that result into a winning streak. The Oilers have lost 10 of their previous 12 play-offs. Devan Dubnyk was dented for three
goals on 25 shots in the loss.
Edmonton forward Shawn Horcoff said that his side never looked like winning on the night. He said, "Games that we come out and we're ready to play right off the bat, we're in every game. We might not always win, but we're right there and we have a chance
to (win). That wasn't the case tonight."
Chicago dominated the play by notching the first three goals of the game.
Just after the halfway mark of the opening stanza, the teams held a faceoff in the right circle in the Oilers end. The Blackhawks battled for control in the corner and Toews finally got his stick on the puck. He immediately slipped it to the slot for Sharp,
who fired a shot past Dubnyk to give Chicago a 1-0 lead.
An Edmonton error then allowed the Blackhawks’ to score their second, which came just five minutes into the middle session.
With the puck along the left boards in the Blackhawks’ zone, Taylor Hall chipped a backhander to the point, but defenseman Jeff Petry attempted to dump it back in the zone. That gave Bickell a chance to rush up-ice on a solo breakaway and fire a backhander
into the net.
Kane pushed Chicago’s lead to 3-0 on the sixth power-play just four minutes into the final frame. The goal was set up by Tomas Kopecky, who sent a nice backhand pass from behind the goal line to Kane, who then ripped a one-timer from the right circle into
the net.
Eberle ruined Crawford’s shutout bid and put the Oilers on the board to cut the deficit to 3-1 with less than four minutes to play in the game. He converted a rebound off Jim Vandermeer’s point shot, but it was too late for Edmonton.
Kane eventually put the game away when he rounded off the scoring at 4-1, with an empty netter in the last minute.
Tags: