Vegas drop 5-1 decision in Edmonton, feel heat from below With the loss, and St Louis win, Vegas are only three points clear for the second wild card in the West

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In Edmonton, the visiting Vegas Golden Knights may be reigning Stanley Cup Champions, but there is no one treating them with much respect these days.

On Wednesday night, the Oilers added to the insults with a 5-1 win over the struggling Knights.

Stuart Skinner made 19 saves in the win.

The Oilers improved to 48-24-5 off their third straight win.

“You look at the score and think it’s pretty lopsided in our favor, but I don’t believe it was a 5-1 game,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “I believe we were the better team, but [Skinner] made some key saves, especially the breakaway in the second.”

The Oilers took a 4-0 lead in the game in the third period.

Cody Ceci got the Edmonton offense on a roll with a strike at 9:37 of the opening stanza. He scored after collecting an errant puck along the right boards, and firing on net where it deflected in for the goal.

In the middle frame, the Oilers’ Mattias Ekholm scored at 5:38, scoring off a slap shot form the left circle, making it 2-0 to Edmonton.

Zach then extended the lead to 3-0 when he hit off a rebound at 8:06 of the second. The goal was his 53rd of the campaign.

“When you’re missing the best player in the world, you don’t try to replace him,” Hyman said. “Everyone as a group has to step up and play better and, collectively, I thought it was one of our better games of the season.

“Everyone was on the same page. It’s amazing when you’re connected how much faster you are as a team.”

Leon Draisaitl ballooned the lead to 4-0 with a two-skater power play marker at 6:50 of the third period. He scored with a one-timer form the right circle.

Vegas dropped to 42-28-8 off their third straight loss.

“Definitely second period, below the goal line breakout execution is what ended up being the difference in the game,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy. “And I thought they did a great job of breaking out.

“We need to be better on the forecheck to create some anxiety for them, some turnovers, get us some chances, and to me, that was the difference in the game. They were miles ahead of us in that area.”

With Vegas skating one short, Keegan Kolesar  hit a shorthanded marker, scoring off a breakaway at  7:50, for a 4-1 count.

“Yeah, there’s time. You can keep telling yourself that, but before you know it you run out of time. We saw that a couple years ago,” Kolesar said. “Right now, our game is nowhere where we need to be, and even if we were to get in, it might be a quick bounce for us out of there.”

The Oilers replied with a strike by Dylan Holloway, on a recall from Bakersfield Condors of the American Hockey League, at 9:56 to push the lead to 5-1 for the final count on the scoreboard.

“I don’t think the goalie saw me. I kind of got lucky,” Holloway said. “I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s no way he’s leaving it,’ and then it got left perfectly for me.

“That was huge. It was definitely a good bounce for me and I was pretty excited about that one.”

Adin Hill made 21 saves in the loss.

“We’re in a stretch of that bad luck around the front of our net that hasn’t helped,” Cassidy said. “But we have to do a better job of taking care of business in front of the net, tying up sticks.”

Note – Connor McDavid did not ice the game with an apparent lower-body injury.