No McMassacre, Determined Penguins Beat Oilers

The Pittsburgh Penguins had lost seven consecutive games to Edmonton before Thursday evening.

They had been outscored in those games, 37-9, and might have been outplayed even more than those numbers suggest.

And most of the time, Connor McDavid’s fingerprints were all over the Oilers’ victories.

After being held to three goals and seven assists in his first eight games against the Penguins, McDavid had piled up six goals and 11 assists during the Oilers’ 7-0 run.

But while the Penguins did not shut down McDavid Thursday — he picked up three assists — they did contain him enough to defeat Edmonton, 5-3, at PPG Paints Arena.

The victory raised their record to 18-17-8.

The second of Sidney Crosby’s two assists in the opening period moved him past Joe Sakic and into ninth place on NHL’s all-time points lead with 1,642.

Evgeni Malkin, the Penguins’ second-line center, missed his second game because of an unspecified upper-body injury. He worked out on the ice during and after the team’s optional game-day skate.

The Penguins took a 5-3 lead into the third period, and had to kill a roughing minor assessed to Michael Bunting at 11:04 to preserve that cushion.

The Penguins not only did not give up a goal on Edmonton’s first shot of the game — nine of their previous 42 opponents had done just that — but grabbed a 1-0 lead at 3:21 of the opening period, as Rickard Rakell punched a rebound past Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner from the left side of the crease.

Bryan Rust and Marcus Pettersson earned assists on the goal, Rakell’s 21st.

Rakell’s goal snapped Edmonton’s shutout streak against the Penguins at 130:58. It was their first against the Oilers since Malkin scored last March 3 at Rogers Place.

The Penguins’ top line struck again at 7:22, as Rakell screened Skinner and Rust beat him with a wrist shot from the top of the left circle for his 16th. Pettersson and Crosby got the assists.

Kevin Hayes kept the Pittsburgh Penguins’ rampage going at 9:46, throwing a shot past Skinner from below the hash marks after getting a feed from Drew O’Connor, who was below the goal line. Ex-Oilers forward Jesse Puljujarvi picked up the second assist on the goal, Hayes’ sixth.

Edmonton finally broke through at 12:33, but not until goalie Alex Nedeljkovic had made a sensational save on a Zach Hyman breakaway. Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl got to the rebound, however, and was able to shovel it past Nedeljkovic to cut the Penguins’ lead to 3-1 and become the first NHL player to record 30 goals this season.

The Penguins, so often guilty of having a letdown after scoring themselves in 2024-25, had the opposite reaction to Edmonton’s goal, as O’Connor countered Draisaitl’s goal by snapping in a shot from inside the left circle at 13:41 for his sixth.

Rust, who recorded the second three-point period of his career, and Crosby got assists.

The Penguins got the first power play of the game when Oilers winger Vasily Podkolzin was sent off for tripping at 5:01 of the second. Crosby took full advantage of it 41 seconds later, taking a feed from Michael Bunting and tossing in a shot from the bottom of the right circle for his 12th.

The second assist went to Erik Karlsson.

Edmonton got a chance with the extra man when Kris Letang was called for slashing at 6:07, but failed to beat Nedeljkovic.

Draisaitl, however, sliced the Penguins’ lead to 5-2 at 10:58, pulling in a cross-ice pass from McDavid and burying a puck behind Nedeljkovic from outside the right dot.

Rust was penalized for interfering with McDavid at 18:09, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins got Edmonton within two at the second intermission by scoring from the slot at 19:15.

The Pittsburgh Penguins are scheduled to practice Friday at noon at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.