Oilers vs. Islanders: Connor McDavid Pushes Record Assist Streak to 14 as Tristan Jarry Blanks New York

Connor McDavid went trick-or-treating on Long Island and came home with the only candy that matters to him: another assist. His back-door feed to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on a late second-period power play pushed his NHL-record season-opening assist streak to 14 games, and at this point the streak feels less like a stat and more like a long-running TV show that keeps getting renewed because nobody can stop watching.

The Edmonton Oilers handled the rest, beating the New York Islanders 4-0 on Saturday afternoon at UBS Arena. Nugent-Hopkins scored twice, Tristan Jarry made 18 saves for his second straight shutout, and the Oilers stayed perfect on the road at 6-0-0.

A Rough Start, Then a Second-Period Takeover

The afternoon turned ugly early, and not in a fun Halloween way. Islanders forward Emil Heineman was ejected at 2:22 of the first period for a knee-on-knee hit on Edmonton's Isaac Howard. According to the AP, Howard put no weight on his left leg as he was helped off the ice, and he did not return.

That handed Edmonton a five-minute power play, and the Oilers did nothing with it. The first period ended scoreless.

The game tilted hard in the second. At 8:42, Kasperi Kapanen forced a turnover on the forecheck and fed Nugent-Hopkins, who beat Ilya Sorokin from point-blank range for a 1-0 lead. Just 68 seconds later, Leon Draisaitl turned a loose puck into a slick skate-to-stick move and found Vasily Podkolzin with an open net at 9:50. That was Podkolzin's ninth goal of the season, and it was the moment the Islanders' afternoon started to feel like a horror movie where everyone can see what is coming except the characters on screen.

The cushion arrived with 1:34 left in the middle frame. Islanders defenseman Matthew Schaefer went to the box for holding, and on the ensuing power play McDavid slid a pass to the back door for Nugent-Hopkins, who buried it for a 3-0 lead. Jason Dickinson iced it with an empty-netter at 17:23 of the third, his first goal of the season.

McDavid Is Doing Something Silly

The numbers are ridiculous. McDavid's assist on the power-play goal was his league-best 29th of the season. He has 37 points in 14 games, and the AP noted that no other NHL player has even 29 combined goals and assists. The AP also pointed out that he is on pace for more than 200 points, which is the kind of projection that should come with a disclaimer.

The Oilers added another wrinkle: McDavid's 35 points in October trail only Mario Lemieux's 38 points in October of 1988 and his 36 points in October of 1992 for the most in a single October in NHL history, according to the team. Finishing third behind two Lemieux months is not a bad way to close out a calendar page.

Nugent-Hopkins, who had the best seat in the house for the latest chapter, summed it up after the game. "He just finds ways, and even if things aren't going his way or the team's way, he'll find a way to kind of get us some momentum, and usually that ends up in a goal for us," he said, per the Oilers' website. "It's been a lot of fun to watch, and I know he's not gonna slow down."

The Supporting Cast Showed Up

Nugent-Hopkins tripled his season goal total in one afternoon, going from one goal to three, and the Oilers said his power-play strike was the 90th of his career, moving him past Mark Messier for seventh in franchise history.

Draisaitl added two assists and won 10 of 19 faceoffs, and the Oilers noted he sits alone in second in the league scoring race behind his own teammate with 26 points, including 12 goals. One team employing the top two scorers in the sport remains a deeply unfair arrangement for everybody else.

Then there is Jarry. He stopped all 18 shots he faced, coming off a 24-save shutout of Calgary on Wednesday. The workload was light, but Nugent-Hopkins made a point of saying the Islanders still got their looks. "He's been great last few times," Nugent-Hopkins said. "I thought tonight as a group, we were playing solid defensively and just trying to limit their high-quality chances, but they still found ways to get some really good looks, and when they did, he stood tall on there and made some big saves."

The Turning Point

Call it the 68-second swing. For nearly half the game, this was a scoreless grind in which the Islanders had survived a five-minute major and were throwing their bodies around, finishing with a 24-17 edge in hits. Then Kapanen's forecheck and Draisaitl's pass flipped it to 2-0 in barely more than a minute, and New York never had an answer. Against a goalie riding a shutout streak, a two-goal hole felt like a canyon.

Stats That Matter

• 14: McDavid's season-opening assist streak, an NHL record that keeps growing.
• 2: Straight shutouts for Jarry, who blanked Calgary before blanking New York.
• 68 seconds: The gap between Nugent-Hopkins' first goal and Podkolzin's, the burst that decided the game.
• 0-for-4: The Islanders' power play. Edmonton went 1-for-6, but one was plenty.
• 6-0-0: Edmonton's road record this season.

What It Means

The Oilers are 10-2-2 with 22 points, and they have won 10 of their first 14 games in their first season with Mike Babcock behind the bench, per the AP. They have also won back-to-back games by an identical 4-0 score after a stretch that included a 7-2 loss to Toronto and a shootout loss to Detroit. Edmonton opened a three-game swing through the New York area with this one and heads to Madison Square Garden to face the Rangers on Sunday.

For the Islanders, the loss snapped a two-game winning streak built on a shootout win at Nashville and an overtime win at Minnesota. They fell to 7-5-2 with 16 points and 4-2-1 at home. They also played without defenseman Ryan Pulock, who left Thursday's game at Minnesota with what the team called an upper-body injury. New York gets some time off before hosting Carolina, the defending Stanley Cup champions, on Thursday.

Closing Take

There is a version of this game where the Islanders feel good about themselves: they killed off a five-minute major, kept it scoreless for half the game and won the hits battle. Then McDavid did what McDavid does, Nugent-Hopkins cashed in, and Jarry turned the rest into a formality. The scariest thing in the building on Halloween did not wear a mask. It wore No. 97, and it is still only October.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details from the Associated Press; postgame quotes and team notes as reported by the Edmonton Oilers on nhl.com.