Oilers 6, Hurricanes 5 in a shootout. Five points each still needed one more finish.

Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a hand in every Edmonton goal Thursday. It still took Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to settle the game. His third-round shootout finish gave the Oilers a 6-5 win over Carolina after a night when both of Edmonton's stars collected two goals and three assists.

Ten combined points did not mean ten goals. McDavid and Draisaitl were both credited on the same five Edmonton scoring plays. They supplied four of the goals themselves; Nugent-Hopkins scored the other on the power play. The final score's sixth Oilers goal was the team bonus for winning the shootout, separate from individual scoring totals.

The comeback needed a second rescue

Carolina led 4-2 after two periods. McDavid cut the deficit 26 seconds into the third, and Draisaitl tied it on the power play at 2:51. Edmonton had erased the two-goal gap before three minutes of the period had elapsed.

That did not finish the work. Juuso Valimaki put Carolina back ahead at 17:20, leaving Edmonton with another deficit and only 2:40 remaining. McDavid answered 72 seconds later, assisted by Draisaitl. With 1:28 left, the game was tied again.

The second response was the more urgent one. Edmonton's early third-period surge had restored a game it could still lose in several ways. McDavid's late equalizer rescued it from the specific problem of trailing with almost no time left. Carolina had made the Oilers earn the comeback twice.

A different kind of sixth goal

Neither team scored in overtime. McDavid and Draisaitl were stopped on their shootout attempts, as were Carolina's Shayne Gostisbehere and Andrei Svechnikov. Nugent-Hopkins converted Edmonton's third attempt. Devon Levi then stopped Seth Jarvis to complete the win.

Levi made 22 saves on 27 shots before the shootout and stopped all three attempts in it. Carolina outshot Edmonton 27-21. The Oilers' extraordinary individual production had kept the game alive; the last save and the one successful shootout attempt finally ended it.

The five-point lines will stand out in the box score. The sequence explains the result: a two-goal recovery, a late answer to another Carolina lead, then a deciding finish from the teammate who had supplied Edmonton's only goal outside its star pair.