McDavid, Oilers rally late to defeat Blue Jackets in OT

EDMONTON -- Connor McDavid scored twice in the third period, and the Edmonton Oilers rallied late for a 5-4 overtime win against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Rogers Place on Monday.

Jack Roslovic won it on a breakaway 56 seconds into overtime after Jake Walman scored short-handed to tie it 4-4 at 19:02 of the third period with his second goal of the game. Walman skated toward the crease and attempted to send a pass across, only to have it go off the stick of Blue Jackets forward Mathieu Olivier and over the right shoulder of Jet Greavesand in.

“Just a guy who took over for a couple of shifts,” Roslovic said of McDavid. “And it’s not even those shifts, it was the whole game. It’s a body of work that happens through 60 minutes, not just one miraculous play. It is effort throughout a whole game that leads to one extra inch of open ice and that’s when he becomes who he is.”

Walman and Roslovic also each had an assist for the Oilers (7-6-4), who ended a three-game skid. Stuart Skinner made 15 saves.

Adam Fantilli and Boone Jenner each had a goal and an assist, and Sean Monahan and Ivan Provorov also scored for the Blue Jackets (7-7-1), who lost their fourth in a row (0-3-1). Greaves made 19 saves.

“We caught a really few bad breaks,” Columbus coach Dean Evason said. “That puck has no business going in, they’re passing the puck across the seam and we go stick-on-puck and it ends up in our net. Do we make some mistakes? Yeah. But the way that we played, it’s a step in the right direction.

“I thought our compete, our level of urgency, our willingness and desperation to compete and battle was great. So was theirs. It was a good hockey game, but we think the majority of the play was in our direction and we’ll move forward off this one.”

Provorov gav the Blue Jackets a 1-0 lead at 11:42 of the first period with a wrist shot from the point through traffic that beat Skinner’s glove just after a Columbus power play expired.

Walman tied it 1-1 at 17:28 with a wrist shot that got past Greaves’ glove and over his right shoulder.

“That’s probably the exact type of game it was going to take to get out of this little funk, or at least to start,” Walman said. “It wasn’t perfect at all, but we found a way and stuck with it. There was a lot to like in that game.”

Monahan put the Blue Jackets back ahead 2-1 at 1:39 of the second period, gaining the zone on an odd-man rush and picking up the rebound off a shot by Kent Johnson, which he put past Skinner’s outstretched pad on the backhand.

"I thought we worked hard tonight and did a lot of good things, but losing [stinks],” Monahan said. “You feel the emotion of the loss, but we did a lot of good things, but we play tomorrow and we have to get going right away.

“I thought we played well. We’re doing a lot of the right things that we want to do as a team and the more we do that, the more success we’re going to have, so we have to stick to that.”

Jenner extended it to 3-1 at 18:02, taking a centering pass from Dante Fabbro at the top of the crease and sending it back door on Skinner.

McDavid closed it to 3-2 just 58 seconds into the third period, extending his goal streak to three games. The Oilers captain spun around Denton Mateychuk, causing the Blue Jackets defenseman to fall down, before sending a backhand shot from the slot past Greaves’ blocker.

“The group likes to put itself in a tough spot and just when you think it’s a tough spot, we go a little bit further,” McDavid said. “Then we decide it’s time to go. We stuck with it.

“We put ourselves in a tough spot, but we’re good at coming from behind. We found a way. It’s not the prettiest way to win a game, but a win nonetheless and we move on.”

Fantilli made it 4-2 at 4:19, deflecting a pass by Oilers forward Andrew Mangiapane and getting open for the feed from Kirill Marchenko to snap the puck short side past Skinner from the right dot.

McDavid cut it to 4-3 at 13:39 with his second goal after Evan Bouchard took away a pass in the neutral zone, sending him into the zone and around Marchenko before scoring past Greaves point blank.

McDavid, who has four goals during his scoring streak, also extended his point streak to five games (four goals, six assists).

“Connor wasn’t going to let us lose tonight, he was so focused on getting the job done,” said Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch, whose team was coming off a 9-1 loss to the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Saturday. “I’ve seen Connor rise to the occasion and play some tremendous games, and I’m not going to say this was his best game that I’ve seen him play, but under the circumstances it’s right up there. Just because he was so determined to get the job done.

“He had an incredible night, two fabulous goals, but there was just so much determination to his game that it was like, ‘It’s not going to happen again tonight.’ And he just willed the team to win.”

NOTES: Walman scored the first game-tying short-handed goal in the final minute of regulation in Oilers history. The last player in the League to achieve the feat was Vladimir Tarasenko (59:40 on Dec. 15, 2022). … Fantilli (146 games) became the fourth-fastest player in Blue Jackets history to reach the 90-point mark, trailing Pierre-Luc Dubois (128 games), Nikolay Zherdev (131) and Rick Nash (141). … The Oilers recorded their second multigoal, third-period comeback win of the season. There are only four other seasons in the past 20 years in which Edmonton has recorded multiple in one campaign: 2013-14 (five), 2021-22 (two), 2010-11 (two) and 2005-06 (two).