Senators score five in third period to upend Oilers, 6-4

In Edmonton, the Oilers’ season took another nasty turn on Saturday night.“I’m not sure what to tell you, it’s been a long lay-off coming in,” the Oilers’ Connor McDavid said. “We worked ourselves to a 3-1 lead and gave it away. I wish I had an answer. We were rolling along and got a couple of chances early and don’t finish them and we gave up a two-on-one.”

Leading 3-1 over the Ottawa Senators after two periods of play, the Oilers coughed up five goals in the third period and lost, 6-4.

The loss was the sixth straight for Edmonton.

Josh Norris hit for a pair of goals for the Senators

“It’s not really how we drew it up, but that’s how hockey goes sometimes,” Norris said. “I think it was a lot of fun and the guys enjoyed it. We have to clean some things up, but that’s hockey and it’s the way the game goes sometimes. We kind of thrived on that and it was great to get the win.”

Ottawa improved to 11-18-2.

“I think a lot of other times you’re down 3-1, you try to take care of it yourself and you try to do it yourself and you end up losing 5-1 or 6-1,” Senators head coach D.J. Smith said. “We mixed the lines up a little bit and that [Chris] Tierney, Gaudette, Formenton line gave us a spark and it was a great goal by Gaudette, and then Formenton gets one, and it just put us on the board.”

Matt Murray made 33 saves for his second straight win and second of the season.

After Norris scored for a 1-0 Sens lead, Zack Kassian, Kailer Yamamoto, and Brendan Perlini scored three straight for a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes.

“That’s one we let slip away, we’re going into the third period with the lead, and we couldn’t wrap it up,” Kassian said. “We need to wrap it up, we need to win that game.”

Edmonton fell to 18-15-2.

Ottawa’s Adam Gaudette cut the score to 3-2,and and Alex Formenton tied the game, 3-3.

“It was a lot of fun, personally, it’s been a while since I’ve had that much fun playing hockey,” Gaudette said. “It’s been a tough year-and-a-half or so, so it really feels good to contribute and to help this team win. That’s what I’m here for, to do anything possible to help this team progress and win.

“It’s a great group of guys in the locker room and credit to everyone, we really stuck with it, down two goals, we didn’t roll over we just came back and played our game and stuck with our system and good things happen because of that.”

Artem Zub put Ottawa into a 4-3, before Darnell Nurse tied it for the Oilers at 12:11 of the third.

“We’re just finding ways to lose,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said. “We did a lot of good things in the game, but there’s some areas; we took a penalty early in the game and gave up a goal, we took a penalty late in the game and gave up a goal and there were some things in between. Lots of things we’ve been talking of trying to do, we did, but ultimately, we’re finding ways to lose games.”

Norris, who had two power play goals, scored his second for a 5-4 lead.

Zach Sanford added an empty-net strike to ice the win with 58 seconds left on the clock.