It was 37 years and 16 days ago when Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and three other Hockey Hall of Famers converged in the same game with 688 combined points in the 1985-86 season.
That marked the highest combined point total between any five players entering a game in NHL history. Three days later, five 100-point scorers appeared again in the same regular season game — the very last time in an era when it was common.
Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and the three Oilers they faced Tuesday night at Ball Arena might all be destined for the Hall of Fame someday as well. But with five 100-point scorers coming together for the first time since 1986, Edmonton defenseman Evan Bouchard was the hero who scored the overtime goal that gave the Oilers a 2-1 win over the Avs.
“I liked our game. I thought we were engaged right away,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said hours after mentioning his concern with the team’s energy level at morning skate. “Played hard. Pretty tight checking game for the most part. I didn’t think we created enough to take control of the game. … It was a pretty good hockey game.”
The Avalanche (49-24-7) needed only one point to reclaim their own destiny in the Central Division race over Dallas, with two games remaining for both teams. By getting that point, Colorado is up to 105. Dallas has 104. The Avs also clinched home ice in the first round of the playoffs, regardless of their opponent.
Even knowing the importance of that point, though, Bednar said there was no message to his players about taking fewer risks to keep the game tied in the third period: “We’re playing to win.”
“I think it’s hard to look at it that way right now; it’s obviously disappointing,” Logan O’Connor said when asked about the one point. "… I think to come away with a point is definitely huge. It would have been nice to get two, but I guess we set ourselves up to hopefully win the division.”
Elsewhere in the league, the Jets beat the Wild and the Golden Knights beat the Kraken, locking in the eight playoff teams in the West, eliminating Nashville and narrowing Colorado’s possible first-round opponents to three. Those are Minnesota, Seattle and Los Angeles.
All three Avalanche-Oilers games this season required overtime, with Colorado winning the first two. This time, Bo Byram hooked Connor McDavid in the extra period to give Edmonton its fourth power play of the night. A power play that leads the league by 7% hadn’t succeeded yet at that point, but Bouchard scored clean in the 4-on-3.
To earn overtime, the Avs first had to kill a four-minute minor late in the second period without their best penalty killer, Devon Toews, who was in the box. O’Connor blocked a shot with his hand and was in visible pain, but he was stuck in the defensive zone. Moments later he blocked another shot with his stick then cleared the zone to escape the ice. He was OK to return to the game.
“I think at that point there’s so much adrenaline going on that you don’t really feel it, to be honest,” O’Connor said, adding that he was “definitely was ready to get off” the ice.
MacKinnon and McDavid both flashed moments of brilliance with the puck on their sticks in the first period, but while their shifts were the most entertaining, they amounted to nothing. Instead, the goals in the opening stanza belonged to unlikely candidates: Colorado AHL call-up Ben Meyers and Edmonton trade deadline acquisition Mattias Ekholm.
For Meyers, an excellent shift was rewarded with astronomical puck luck. He carried it around the back of the net with top-pairing defenseman Darnell Nurse on his back. After fighting off Nurse, Meyers dished to Bo Byram at the point and found space for a give-and-go. A lunging Nick Bjugstad knocked the puck away from Meyers but toward the net. It bounced off another Oiler’s skate for a go-ahead own goal. Ekholm, a key pick-up for Edmonton’s weak blue line, blasted a one-timer past Alexandar Georgiev 36 seconds later.
The defenses and goaltenders shined brighter than the superstars afterward. Along with the six penalty minutes that Colorado neutralized, Georgiev stoned McDavid on a breakaway that had been set up by an outstanding air pass by Ekholm from behind his own blue line.
“I thought we played a pretty solid game throughout,” Andrew Cogliano said.
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