Edmonton Oilers shutout Columbus Blue Jackets 3-0 in inaugural Canadian road trip matchup
If Columbus was coming into Canada thinking that they would have it easy at any point, they were certainly wrong as the Blue Jackets were shutout, 3-0, going up against Edmonton Oilers in their inaugural road trip matchup on Wednesday night, March 14, 2012,
at the sold-out Rexall Place in Edmonton, Alberta.
After killing off a threatening penalty in the opening period, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins opened the scoring for Edmonton with his 16th of the 2011-2012 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season nearly midway through the second. Nugent-Hopkins had
two points in the match, one goal and an assist from another goal in the match.
Taylor Hall emerged up next with less than five seconds remaining in the period to fire off the power play goal with Columbus’ Cam Atkinson on the benches for high-sticking, taking a dominating 2-0 lead entering the final.
The veteran Edmonton forward, Ryan Smyth, was towards the Blue Jackets net looking to secure the match with less than two minutes remaining till the final buzzer was to be sounded, but a comeback can never played down.
Smyth failed on the shot but Linus Omark fired off on the rebound to grab the opportunity and his second of the regular season.
Starting off the month of March with four straight victories, Columbus has now lost three straight and two against the St. Louis Blues alone. Already way out of the playoff race sitting at number 15 in the Western Conference, Columbus is not worried about
the postseason now at all but will focus rather on rebuilding the team during the offseason.
Blue Jackets are still focused to grab some wins before the regular season comes to an end as they have the second matchup of their Canadian road trip against Vancouver Canucks on Saturday.
After an amazing start to the hockey year, Edmonton is also sitting in the bottom ranks, just one place above Columbus with 61points. They can still make it if Oilers win all of their remaining games, but it certainly does not seem like a possibility.
Oilers have the next at home against provincial rivals, the Calgary Flames on Friday.
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