Oilers win Woodcroft's first game as coach

*Photo from the Copper and Blue*

   So far, the Jay Woodcroft era is off to a good start in Edmonton. Cody Ceci scored, Zach Hyman scored, and the Edmonton Oilers bounced back with a 3-1 victory against the New York Islanders on Friday night at home. 

   With head coach Dave Tippett and assistant coach Jim Playfair being fired early Friday morning by the Oilers, Woodcroft got promoted to head coach after 4 seasons as head coach for their AHL affiliate in Bakersfield. This win helps snap a two game skid for the Oilers, who lost by a combined 8-1 score.

   Woodcroft said of the game that "I enjoyed the way the game was played today. I thought our players really played hard for each other. Mike Smith really turned in an 'A' performance, it allowed us a chance to work our way into the game. I thought we got better as the game went on tonight, and what I really liked to see, when the game was on the line in the third period, we valued hard plays and that's a credit to the players in the dressing room."

   The lone goal of the first period came courtesy of Ceci, who scored on a shot from the point with 57 seconds to go in the first period, making it 1-0 Oilers after 20 minutes of play. It stayed that way until Zach Hyman made it a 2-0 game, doubling the lead at the 10:17 mark of the second period, his 14th goal of the season, assisted by Connor McDavid.

   On the power play 15:04 into the second, Anthony Beauvillier got the Islanders on the board, converting his 8th goal of the season to cut the deficit to 2-1, with Josh Bailey and Ryan Pulock getting assists. Jesse Puljujarvi scored on the power play 9:14 into the 3rd period, which made it 3-1 Oilers, his 11th goal of the season.

   Hyman said of his goal scoring that "One of my first coaches said something to me that stuck was that at the end of the year, you tally up all of the goals and it all evens out at the end. Your shooting percentage will even out at the end, so you're going to have spurts in your season where you're not scoring for an extended period of time, then you'll have spurts where you're scoring a lot."

   After a long stretch of time on IR due to multiple injuries, Smith got the win in his start today, his first win since October 16 against the Calgary Flames. Smith stopped 37 of the 38 shots he faced from the Islanders. That was good for a .974 save percentage as his record moves to 3-4-1.

   On the other side of the ice, Ilya Sorokin made the start for the Islanders, but was outperformed by Smith on the other end. Sorokin turned aside 33 of 36 Edmonton shots, good for a .917 save percentage. With the loss, his record drops to 14-9-5 on the season.

   Islanders head coach Barry Trotz said that "I thought in the first period we had some really good looks. I thought we could have been up a couple of goals in the first period. We didn't find the back of the net, that was a little bit of us and a little bit of Mike Smith. I thought he played very well. We had some really good looks. It was 2-1 and I thought we had it tied up, Casey had a breakaway, Beauvillier hit the crossbar. I thought Wahlstrom scored, and it didn't happen."

   Up next, the Oilers face the San Jose Sharks on the road on Monday, with Mikko Koskinen likely to get the start in goal. The Islanders finish up a back to back on Saturday against the Flames, with Semyon Varlamov starting in net.