In Edmonton, the Detroit red Wings rallied to tie their match with the Oilers on Tuesday, 5-5, but failed to hold serve and the Oilers potted two goals for a 7-5 decision.
Evander Kane hit for a double for the Oilers who won their third straight game.
Mikko Koskinen made 30 saves in the win.
“We got off to the perfect start, we probably spent the first five minutes in their zone, and they had no shots and we had three goals. You couldn’t draw it up any better than that,” Kane said. “But then we started getting away from what was making us successful in those first five, and maybe got a little too comfortable where we were at in the game, and that leaked into the second, and we had a poor start to the third period.”
Edmonton moved to 33-23-4.
The Oilers scored four times in the opening frame.
Detroit’s Marc Staal struck for a pair of goals in his 1,000th NHL game.
“I’ll be honest with you, I thought we did tons of good stuff in this game. Right now, pucks are going in, when teams get chances the pucks are going in,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “They’re fighting for their lives for a playoff spot. Of course, they’re going to come out hard at home. They get matchups and stuff like that. I thought we did tons of good stuff. We talked about being mentally tough and I thought we were unreal that way.”
Detroit fell to 24-29-7.
Devin Shore, Connor McDavid, and McDavid made Zach Hyman scored in the first period to give the Oilers a 3-0 lead.
Staal got the Red Wings on the board with his first.
“Part of the game plan was to come out hard, and I think we’ve done that on this homestand (3-0-0), to assert our game plan on the other team immediately,” Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft said. “We accomplished that, but then there was a little bit of a lull, and what was at the root of that lull was a lot of self-inflicted errors, passing through people, turnovers at the offensive blue line, just things that we didn’t demonstrate in the first five minutes.
“In the end, it’s a credit to our players for finding a way to win when it got tense there.”
Kailer Yamamoto added the fourth goal (power play) of the opening frame.
Detroit rallied to tie the game, 4-4, on goals from Staal, Sam Gagner, and Filip Zadina.
“At 4-2 going into the third period, we had a good feeling that if we kept shooting and get to the net for traffic and we did that,” Detroit’s Dylan Larkin said. “We scored a couple of big goals and we scored a big goal on the power play. Unfortunately, the game just went back and forth too much for us.”
Kane and Detroit’s Lucas Raymond traded goals for a 5-5 tie.
Edmonton’s Warren Foegele broke that tie with the game-winner in the third.
Kane scored an empty=net for the 7-5 final.
Thomas Greiss got the start for the Red Wings and yielded three goals and made three saves before getting the hook.
Alex Nedeljkovic made 22 saves in relief.
“I’m proud of the way our guys worked and competed throughout the game,” Blashill said. “When Kane scores [to make it 5-4] we could have slumped, and we never slumped at all. It’s tough at the end there, you want to find a way to win, and I thought we certainly could have won the hockey game, so that’s tough.”
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