The Oilers don’t need a masterpiece tonight. They just need to look like the better team.
That was the lesson from their win over the New York Rangers, where Edmonton was merely fine at five-on-five and Devon Levi did the heavy lifting. Levi was sharp, made every save he had to make, and didn’t hand the game away.
On the other side, Rangers goalie Dylan Garand gave Edmonton its first goal by turning the puck over to Connor McDavid, who buried it for a 1-0 lead. The Rangers remain the only NHL team without a win when they allow the first goal.
That kind of game can happen over an 84-game season. A team can play well and lose, or play just okay and still walk away with two points.
Everyone in the room will take the second version every time. But the Oilers will need a cleaner performance tonight against a Philadelphia Flyers team that has spent most of this season digging out of a hole.
Philadelphia comes in at 5-10-5, even after a 3-1 win in Vancouver on Monday. On the road, the Flyers are 2-6-2 and have been outscored 30-19.
At five-on-five, that gap is 20-11 against them, and that’s a brutal place to live when you’re averaging 1.1 goals per game at five-on-five. They opened the season with nine straight losses, going 0-6-3, and even though they’ve gone 5-5-1 in their last 15, they haven’t gained much ground in the Eastern Conference standings.
Their last game also came with extra noise. Even in a win, the focus landed on a long disagreement caught on video between Matvei Michkov and Nick Seeler.
Players argue. That part isn’t unusual.
What stood out was how long it lasted.
The Oilers should be able to press that frustration. They have more skill, more pace, better goaltending, better defence and better special teams.
And one of the quieter reasons for Edmonton’s recent run has been the work of both goalies. Since Oct.
2, Tristan Jarry and Devon Levi rank among the top eight in save percentage and goals-against average among the 47 goalies who have played at least seven games. Jarry is fourth in save percentage and fifth in goals-against average, while Levi is fifth in save percentage and eighth in goals-against average.
Levi has drawn plenty of attention in Edmonton, and deservedly so. But Jarry has been excellent too since his opening night.
He was on the ice for a good 30 minutes after most of his teammates had left practice yesterday, which pointed to him getting the start tonight. He also brings a strong track record against Philadelphia, going 8-0-2 in his last 10 starts against the Flyers, all of them back when he was with Pittsburgh.
McDavid is chasing another milestone, too. He can tie his career-best 20-game point streak tonight.
He had one from Dec. 4, 2025, to Jan. 13, 2026, when he put up 19-27-46 over that stretch. Right now, he’s at 11-37-48 in his current 19-game streak and could become the third player to reach 50 points in the first 20 games of a season.
Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux each did it three times.
He’s also been a nightmare for Philadelphia over the years, with 12-24-36 in 19 career games against the Flyers. Twenty-six of those points have come in 10 home games.
He was held off the scoresheet in his first home game against them back in November 2015, but since then he’s piled up the production in bunches. In his last nine home games against Philadelphia, he’s had five points twice, three points three times and two points three times.
Eight multi-point games in nine home games is absurd production, and he’s yet to have back-to-back one-point games this season.
Leon Draisaitl has been every bit as dangerous, with 18 goals and 36 points in 19 games. It’s a blistering start, though not the best opening 19-game stretch of his career. He had 20 goals and 40 points in his first 19 games in 2021-22, then finished that season with 55 goals and 110 points in 80 games.
If McDavid gets to 50 points tonight, it would also be the second 20-game point streak of his career and the 33rd such streak in NHL history. Wayne Gretzky owns six streaks of 20 or more games, with runs of 51, 39, 30, 25, 24 and 23.
Mario Lemieux had two, at 46 and 28 games. Steve Yzerman had two, at 28 and 22.
Patrick Kane has two, at 26 and 20. Adam Oates has two, at 21 and 20.
McDavid would need 28 games to crack the top 10 and 30 to tie Gretzky and Mats Sundin for fifth.
The lineup has a few moving parts. Colton Dach is back after missing two games with an illness and will skate on a new line with Jason Dickinson and Trent Frederic.
Mike Babcock said he likes his top two lines, but he shuffled the bottom two in search of more. He also brought the fourth line back together because it worked well earlier in the season.
Owen Michaels has seen his ice time dip to seven and nine minutes in the last two games, and he has already played 19 games in 43. The adjustment from NCAA hockey to the NHL schedule is a real one, especially with Edmonton about to play six games in nine days starting Saturday.
Michaels is a rookie, and as the season wears on, the games get harder and consistency becomes the separator. With Dach and Frederic in the lineup, one of them could slide to centre to give Michaels a night off.
Josh Samanski isn’t tearing it up in Bakersfield, so a swap there isn’t a sure thing. Another possibility is running McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH and Dickinson down the middle, though that might make more sense later, when Matt Savoie returns and gives them another top-nine winger.
Philadelphia’s offence has been one of the league’s weakest. The Flyers are 31st, averaging 2.25 goals per game, and they have 45 goals as a team - while McDavid alone has 48 points, with Philadelphia having played one more game.
They’ve scored two goals or fewer in 12 of their 20 games and have topped three goals only twice. On the road, they’ve scored 19 goals in 10 games.
For Edmonton, the formula is simple: start fast and don’t let a struggling team hang around. The Oilers are 11-0-2 when they score first, and they’ve done it in 13 of 19 games.
The Flyers, meanwhile, are 1-8-3 when they allow the first goal. Get ahead early, and the pressure shifts hard in Edmonton’s favor.
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