McDavid scores his fifth goal on a Friday Night Hockey Night

Connor McDavid logged his fifth goal of the season, and also tallied his third assist. The points are starting to pile up now. It wasn't his prettiest goal; but it counted on the power play.


Mcdavid also logged an assist on this pretty play.

The Oilers lost 7-4. Evgeny Kuznetsov logged a hat trick. Taylor Hall had an assist, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had a goal. Rough night for Anders Nielsen. Here are the player grades from the Cult of Hockey blog.

Other hockey things from the day:

1. I picked up EA Sports NHL 16. I am 2-3 with the Oilers so far. McDavid has no goals so far. It's pretty fun. I've played a lot of installments of this game through the years. 
2. Holy shit Canadiens, now 8-0 and absolutely bludgeoned to death the Buffalo Sabres by a score of 7-2. 
3. Jimmy Roberts passed away. 
4. Hockey Day in Canada is Saturday February 6th. The Oilers play at Montreal at 2:00 that day. 
5. Also noticed the Oilers play on New Years eve at Rexall, and on January 2nd at 4:00 ET. 
6. They play on Thanksgiving Eve and Black Friday. 
7. Huge hockey night again tomorrow night; the Blue Jackets are in action with an 0-8-0 record at Coloardo. 
8. I found this DFS Hockey site today. 
9. Spent some time reading about Howard Morenz the other day on a cool site about Hockey Legends. 

That's really all I got for tonight.

This Alex Ovechkin goal from Saturday night may have been the best of the young season so far

Now this, is what you call a dangle.

Oilers beat Caps 2-1, biggest win since when?

[Event Summary]

[NHL.com] [Cult of Hockey]

The Washington Capitals have been surging, jumping out to a 7-0-0 start this season. Last night I think the Oil grew up a bit. Look at the sheer joy and passion on the face of Taylor Hall, as he scores his 50th NHL point on a beautiful goal. The video is below. 

It's almost as if Hall's look is part joy, disbelief, happiness, and 'holy shit can you even believe we're here doing this right now against an undefeated Alex Ovechkin-led team?!?!'

It's absolutely astounding to me how much fun these Oilers are to watch. They're now 5-2-2 on the season and they're tied for first place with the Colorado Avalanche--whom they play tonight. I don't expect first place play to continue, partly because I don't think the Oilers get the type of goal-tending they're getting right now all season long. But you ride it for as long as it lasts and accumulate as many points as possible. Right now, the Oil are a good home team who are a tough out every night because of the energy the young kids like Hall, Jordan Eberle (each with goals last night, Eberle adding an assist to go with his GW Goal), and Nugent-Hopkins. Those guys are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Save by save (34 times to be exact), Nik Khabibulin put another brick in the wall. How long can he keep this up? I do think to a degree with Bulin cools off, Devin Dubnyk will be there to pick him up a little bit. And surprise goal-tending was a reason I thought the Oilers could slip into the playoffs this year.

The great thing about this team is they are arriving ahead of schedule and doing it under the radar because no one in the NHL saw this happening.



All this hoopla and excitement happens the same night that the Winnipeg Jets beat the Philadelphia Flyers 9-8. Since it was a record setting game, here's the event summary of that beauty.

Watch video of the 17 goal game here.

Or just check this out: