Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored three goals for his fourth career hat trick, and the Edmonton Oilers held on to beat the Seattle Kraken 5-4 on Saturday night.
“I thought everybody stepped up and did a great job tonight,” Nugent-Hopkins said after the game. “Sometimes a guy kind of gets rewarded for how the team plays, and I thought that’s kind of what happened tonight.”
Adam Henrique and Jeff Skinner also scored, and Mattias Ekholm and Darnell Nurse each had two assists for the Oilers, who moved to 4-0-1 in their last five games despite playing without star forwards Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Stuart Skinner finished with 27 saves.
“You look at our offensive chances tonight — I thought our guys did a lot of good things,” Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “Had a lot of opportunities in the third period to kind of put that game away and we didn’t capitalize, but it was nice to see the guys creating those chances.”
Kaapo Kakko had two goals, and Jaden Schwartz and Andre Burakovsky also scored for the Kraken, who have lost two straight. Jared McCann and Jani Nyman each had two assists, and Joey Daccord finished with 24 saves.
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Nugent-Hopkins scored at even strength, on the power play, and short-handed.
Henrique and Kakko had power-play goals 1:19 apart in the first period for a 1-1 tie after 20 minutes.
After Nugent-Hopkins and Kakko exchanged goals early in the second, Jeff Skinner put the Oilers ahead with 7 1/2 minutes left in the period, and Nugent-Hopkins scored with the man-advantage to make it 4-2.
Burakovsky pulled the Kraken within one at 5:57 of the third, but Nugent-Hopkins scored short-handed with 2:17 left to restore the Oilers’ two-goal lead. Schwartz’s power-play goal 14 seconds later capped the scoring.
Takeaways
Kraken: Kakko moved one point shy of his career high of 40 points, achieved with the New York Rangers in the 2022-2023. Nyman, elevated to the first line in just the 20-year-old’s sixth NHL game, picked up his first two NHL assists.
Oilers: It was the first time since McDavid was drafted by the Oilers that both he and Draisaitl were out of the lineup with injuries.
Key moment
Trailing by one, Seattle pulled its goalie while on a power play for a two-man advantage, but Nugent-Hopkins sent the puck the length of the ice into the empty net to complete the hat trick and push the Oilers’ lead to 5-3.
Key stat
Edmonton has won nine straight against the Kraken while outscoring them 38-21.
Up next
Kraken visit Calgary on Tuesday, and Oilers host Dallas on Wednesday.
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