Devon Levi Gave Up Five Goals. Connor McDavid Won the Game Anyway.
The 24-year-old is 6-1-0 with a sub-.900 save percentage that keeps sliding; Thursday's five-goal night against the defending champs — rescued by McDavid's five points — asks whether Edmonton is solving its goalie problem or outscoring it.
Devon Levi stopped 22 of 27 shots on Thursday night, and the Edmonton Oilers won anyway. The 6-5 shootout win over the defending-champion Hurricanes at Rogers Place moved the 24-year-old to 6-1-0, and dropped a season save percentage that started the night at .898.
Nine nights earlier, after Levi stopped 39 of 40 shots in a 4-1 win in Los Angeles, Connor McDavid called him “such a calming presence” and said the Oilers could “be a little bit better in front of him for sure,” in his postgame availability. That was the ask. Thursday was the bailout. McDavid had two goals and three assists, tied the game with 1:28 left on a shot that went in off Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s skate, and watched Ryan Nugent-Hopkins win it in the shootout on his season debut. The power play, converting at 35.3 percent on the season, struck three times. Six of the Oilers’ nine goals in the first two games of the homestand have come with the man advantage.
The win column and the save column have disagreed before. Levi’s seven starts have produced .975, .950 and .935 nights. The good nights are real. So are the other ones: .682 in the 9-7 opening win over Vancouver, .875 in the loss to Utah, .815 against Carolina. Three of his seven starts have finished under .900. Two of them still went down as Edmonton wins.
Levi stops the shots he’s supposed to stop. The zone breakdown Yardbarker published this week has him at .911 on mid-range shots against a league average of .881, and .972 on long-range shots against .961. The hole is the dangerous ice: .788 on high-danger chances against a league average of .811. Carolina spent Thursday night living there. Sebastian Aho walked in alone 30 seconds into the second period and beat him through the legs. Seth Jarvis spun around Evan Bouchard to finish. The Hockey News noted this week that Edmonton has played better in front of its young goalie and that Mike Babcock’s defensive structure deserves some of the credit.
He stopped all three Carolina shooters after regulation, and made the two third-period saves that got Edmonton to overtime in the first place — the version of Thursday that the postgame coverage led with. “We have to learn to be more resilient, when we bend we can’t break like that,” Babcock said afterward, a coach’s sentence that admits the bending even as it praises the response. OilersNation’s instant reaction put the unease plainer: “The wins are still coming, but the Oilers are hanging on by a thread in a lot of these games lately.”
Frederik Andersen signed a one-year contract on July 1, hurt his knee over the summer, missed all of training camp and opened the season on long-term injured reserve. Babcock has said December is a possible return. Tristan Jarry carries a $5.375 million cap hit into three starts and an .873 save percentage. Levi is 24. He costs $812,500 against the cap and has started seven of Edmonton’s ten games.
