Jobangebote » Once again, Connor McDavid has put the

EDMONTON Vladimir Sobotka Jersey Womens , Alberta (AP) Once again, Connor McDavid has put the rest of the NHL in his rearview mirror.McDavid had two goals to take over the league scoring lead, and the Edmonton Oilers held off the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 on Saturday night for their third straight victory.The Oilers captain and last year’s scoring champion has 23 goals in his last 26 games and 12 points in his past six.”I’m just going to put repeat on,” said McDavid, who added he would be lying if he said he hasn’t kept an eye on where he sat in the race for the Art Ross Trophy.”We pay attention to it. Guys that are in the race, I’m sure they are paying attention to it. We are so far along in the year and everyone has come so far that you might as well put your best foot forward and go for it.”Pontus Aberg also scored for the Oilers, who are 4-1-1 in their last six games. During that span, however, they were eliminated from the playoff race.”Lately we have been stringing some games together, something we didn’t do as well at the start of the season,” forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. ”It was obviously not the way we wanted it to go in the first half Carter Hutton Jersey Womens , but we can take some confidence and play the game the right way to at least go into the summer with at least a good feeling.”Jake Muzzin and Jeff Carter had the goals for the Kings, who have lost two of three. Los Angeles remained tied with idle Anaheim for third place in the Pacific Division.”Chasing games on the road is tough,” Muzzin said. ”We had some chances and didn’t score. I don’t think we were as prepared as we should have emotionally in this game and I don’t know why. We got desperate a little too late. We weren’t able to capitalize and able to come back.”The Oilers started the scoring 45 seconds into the first period when Aberg hooked a puck from behind the net past surprised Kings goalie Jonathan Quick for his sixth point in the last three games.Edmonton made it 2-0 with 4:28 left in the period when McDavid had a strong second effort to bang his own rebound under Quick’s stick for his 37th goal of the season.However, the Kings bounced back just 28 seconds later when Muzzin cleanly beat Oilers goalie Cam Talbot with a shot from the slot.The Oilers regained their two-goal advantage four minutes into the second when McDavid sent a shot through Quick’s legs on a partial breakaway. The goal gave McDavid the NHL scoring lead with 96 points, moving him ahead of Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.The Kings got that goal back a couple of minutes later when Tobias Rieder made a long feed to Carter, who scored at the side of the net.Talbot made a huge stop on a short-handed breakaway by Nate Thompson early in the third and withstood some late pressure to preserve the win.NOTES: The teams split their four-game season series. … Out with injuries for the Oilers were Oscar Klefbom (shoulder surgery), Michael Cammalleri (undisclosed) and Zack Kassian (undisclosed).UP NEXTKings: Return home to play Calgary on Monday.Oilers: Stay home to face Anaheim on Sunday.— TAMPA, Fla. — December divisional matches rarely register high on the hype meter around NHL circles.But make no mistakes, when the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, plenty of eyes will be peering in to see what happens when the top two teams in the league faceoff for the first of four meetings this season.Tampa Bay has won seven consecutive games and 10 of the past 11 to open-up a six-point lead on Toronto in the league and Atlantic Division standings. The Lightning are the highest scoring team in the league with 128 goals while averaging a league-best 4.00 goals per game. The Maple Leafs are second in goals scored with 113 while averaging 3.65 per game, third best in the league.Article continues below ...Both teams are well aware that this meeting may not be just any other mid-season matchup.“They’re setting the standard for the National Hockey League and we’d like to be where they’re at Chris Kunitz Jersey Womens ,” Toronto head coach Mike Babcock told Sportsnet.ca. “We want our young guys to get the experience quicker so that we can be a good playoff team quicker, but in the meantime, we’ve got to win regular season games.”The two teams appear to be on a collision course for a playoff meeting in April, with the current playoff format all but guaranteeing a second-round meeting if the standings remain the same at the end of the regular season.So it’s never too early to want to send any kind of a message in a game that figures to feature more energy and buzz than normal in a pre-Christmas matchup.“Potentially you could see them down the road,” Maple Leafs’ center Nazim Kadri told the Toronto Sun. “We’re going to give them all the credit in the world but we want to go in there and beat them.”Tampa Bay could see the return of Vezina Trophy finalist goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has been out since Nov. 14 with a fractured foot. Vasilevskiy took part in the full practice on Wednesday, a day after Eddie Pasquale was reassigned to the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League.Lightning head coach Jon Cooper did not say Vasilevskiy would start against Toronto, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t either, even with some hesitancy in throwing the team’s top netminder back in the crease after a month-long absence.“It’s not as much the injury as it is the cardio and how he’s feeling in that respect,” Cooper said. “I’ll sit down with him in a little bit and see how he feels, but he looked good out there (at practice).”Louis Domingue Brandon Manning Jersey Womens , who has started 13 of the 14 games in Vasilevskiy’s absence, has won six consecutive games and posted an 11-2 record in that span.No matter who is in goal for Tampa Bay, however, it’s more about how the team plays in front of the net, more than anything else.“The more we can distance ourselves from the team behind, the better,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said. “(Thursday’s) going to be a tough game, we know that, probably the toughest one of the year. We need our A-game.”