Connor McDavid scored a hat trick and also had an assist as the host Edmonton Oilers rallied from a three-goal, second-period deficit to defeat the Vancouver Canucks 5-3 on Wednesday night in the season opener for both teams.
McDavid has 11 career regular-season hat tricks plus one in the 2020 playoff qualifying round. He also became the sixth-fastest player in NHL history to reach the 700-point plateau, getting there in 488 games.
Leon Draisaitl had a goal and two assists, Darnell Nurse scored a short-handed goal and added an assist and Zach Hyman also had two assists for the Oilers. Jack Campbell made 33 saves in his Edmonton debut.
J.T. Miller had a goal and an assist and Elias Pettersson and Andrei Kuzmenko also scored goals for Vancouver. Thatcher Demko finished with 20 saves.
Vancouver jumped out to a 2-0 lead on goals by Pettersson and Miller just 51 seconds apart, setting a franchise record for the two fastest goals to start a season in the process. The Canucks needed just 2:40 to score the two goals, breaking the previous mark of 3:55 set in 1983 against the Calgary Flames.
The 26-year-old Kuzmenko, an undrafted free agent making his Vancouver debut after starring in the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia, made it 3-0 just 39 seconds into the second period with a power-play goal, tapping in Miller’s cross-ice pass into a wide-open right side of the net.
But Edmonton rebounded to tie it before the end of the period with three goals in the span of 15:07. The first two came on the power play.
Draisaitl got the first one on a wrist shot from the bottom of the right circle and McDavid followed with wrist shot from the right side of the goal at the end of a tic-tac-toe passing play with Tyson Barrie and Draisaitl. Nurse then tied it at the 19:19 mark with a short-handed goal, one-timing a shot from the right circle off a Draisaitl pass at the end of a three-on-one break.
McDavid then gave Edmonton its first lead with 4:59 to go in the game when he buried his own rebound from the low slot for his 700th career NHL point.
Vancouver pulled Demko for an extra attacker with 2:11 to go and McDavid sealed the win with an empty-netter off an Evander Kane feed with 24.5 seconds left.
–Field Level Media
