EDMONTON, Alberta -- The Penguins are going to lose a game to Edmonton in regulation someday.
Really, there's no good reason to think that they won't. After all, it's happened before.
Just not recently enough that most people alive today remember it.
Forensic statisticians sifting through the fossil record have concluded that their most recent 60-minute defeat by the Oilers took place on approximately Jan. 10, 2006. (No, not B.C.)
The Penguins are 15-0-4 against Edmonton since then, including a 5-2 victory at Rogers Place Friday night. It is the longest streak of getting at least one point from an opponent in franchise history and includes an 8-0-2 run in Edmonton, where their last regulation loss came on Dec. 6, 2003.
Which was, in technical terms, quite a while ago.
The victory raised the Penguins' record for the season to 21-10-4 and their all-time mark when getting goals from Chad Ruhwedel and Joseph Blandisi (provided both are assisted by Zach Aston-Reese) in the same game to 1-0.
But important as those two goals were -- they gave the Penguins a 2-0 lead less than 13 minutes into the opening period -- the one Kris Letang scored probably won the game for them:
Even though it wasn't the game-winner.
It's not just that Letang's shot from near the left dot 38 seconds into the third period gave the Penguins their third two-goal advantage of the evening; it's that a short-handed goal by Oilers center Riley Sheahan with 22.4 seconds left in the second period had given his teammates a renewed vigor and legitimate reason to believe that they could squeeze a point or two out of this game.
Letang's goal changed all that.
"That was huge," Aston-Reese said. "Anytime you give up a goal like that, under five minutes (before intermission) -- especially on a power play -- it can easily take the wind out of your sails. But (give) credit to our power play to bounce back like that."
That goal seemed to deflate the Oilers even more than Sheahan's had the Penguins.
"It felt like we grabbed the momentum right back," Mike Sullivan said.
Probably because they did. And this time, the Penguins didn't let go.
They got through their two-game season series against the Oilers allowing Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the NHL's top two scorers, a total of one point: Draisaitl's game-winning goal in Edmonton's 2-1 overtime victory Nov. 2 at PPG Paints Arena.
Neutralizing them the way the Penguins did testifies to the coaches' ability to design an effective game plan and the players' ability to execute it.
"We did a really good job of taking time and space away from their top guys," Jared McCann said.
McDavid and Draisaitl do much of their damage on Edmonton's power play, which entered the game with a league-best conversion rate of 30.4 percent. But after picking up a pair of penalties in the first period, the Penguins stayed out of the box until Evgeni Malkin and Oilers goalie Mike Smith received coincidental minors at 18:36 of the third.
"The guys they have on it, obviously, are some of the best offensive players in the league," Sullivan said. "So the discipline to make sure we didn't take any unnecessary ones was critical."
So was finding ways to get pucks past Smith, who made 51 saves during the Oilers' overtime victory at PPG Paints Arena. Beating him was a far less daunting challenge Friday, as Smith stopped just 21 of 25 shots before Brandon Tanev closed out the scoring by hitting an empty net at 17:42 of the third.
McCann scored what proved to be the game-winner at 15:38 of the second period, as he knocked the puck away from Oilers defenseman Ethan Bear at the right point in the Penguins' end, then broke in alone on Smith before flipping a backhander behind him:
"It's been a while since I had a breakaway," McCann said. "I knew I had a little bit of time. I just tried a pump-fake, and he bit."
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