Hyman still thriving as net-front presence for Oilers

EDMONTON — Zach Hyman has developed into one of the more effective net-front players in the NHL by heeding the advice of coaches on the virtues of driving to the net.

The Edmonton Oilers forward has 15 goals in 22 games and is on pace to exceed the 36 he scored last season, which was an NHL career high for the 31-year-old.

Hyman added to his goal total when he scored a hat trick in the Oilers’ (10-12-1) fifth straight win, 6-1 against the Carolina Hurricanes at Rogers Place on Wednesday.

“It’s kind of just been a staple of my game,” Hyman said. “I’ve always been trying to figure out how to score goals, and that’s the way I score goals. Early on, coaches always say if you want to score goals, you have to go to the net. In college, I didn’t score very much in my first couple of years, even though I was still going to the net. When I first got to the NHL, I didn’t score that much either, but I was still going to the net.”

Hyman played four seasons at the University of Michigan before entering the NHL. He was selected by the Florida Panthers in the fifth round (No. 123) of the 2010 NHL Draft but did not sign out of college and his rights were traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs on June 19, 2015.

Hyman played six seasons with Toronto before signing a seven-year, $38.5 million contract ($5.5 million average annual value) as an unrestricted free agent with Edmonton on July 28, 2021. He is in his third season with the Oilers and has 26 points (15 goals, 11 assists) in 22 games.

“He’s had an interesting road to get to where he is and he’s put in a lot of hard work,” Edmonton captain Connor McDavid said. “I think everyone can understand his kind of path and have a ton of respect for everything that he’s done to get himself into being a really, really good player in this league.”

Hyman’s best offensive season with the Maple Leafs was in 2018-2019, when he had 41 points (21 goals, 20 assists) in 71 games. He had 54 points (27 goals, 27 assists) in 76 games in his first season with the Oilers in 2021-22, then had 83 points (36 games, 47 assists) in 79 games last season.

As a top-six forward with Edmonton, Hyman is playing with highly skilled players, the likes of McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evander Kane. Hyman has made the most of the opportunity and is not afraid to do the heavy lifting, digging pucks out of the corner and battling in front of the net.

“There is a difference between going to the net and going to the net with a purpose and going to score,” Hyman said. “You have to be able to separate yourself from your defender, get your stick free, and you have to try and figure out where the puck’s going to be. There’s a lot of different things that go into it. If you go to the net enough, you’re going to figure it out.”