Oilers start strong, knock off Golden Knights

Leon Draisaitl scored his league-leading 22nd goal and also had two assists as the host Edmonton Oilers jumped out to a five-goal lead and then held on for a 6-3 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday afternoon.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Connor Brown each added a goal and an assist for Edmonton, which extended its win streak to a season-best five games. Zach Hyman and Corey Perry scored goals, Darnell Nurse added two assists and Stuart Skinner made 38 saves for the Oilers, who improved to 8-1-1 over their last 10 games.

Ivan Barbashev scored his team-high 15th goal and Brett Howden and Victor Olofsson also scored for Vegas, which had a four-game win streak snapped. Noah Hanifin added two assists and Adin Hill finished with 28 saves while allowing a season-high six goals for the Golden Knights, who had allowed a total of just five goals in their previous four games.

Edmonton took a 1-0 lead at the 17:36 mark of the first period on a power-play goal by Nugent-Hopkins, who fired a wrist shot from the left circle past a screen into the top far corner. The goal snapped a 101-minute shutout streak against Hill and the Golden Knights for the Oilers who were blanked by Vegas, 1-0, on Dec. 3 in Las Vegas.

The Oilers opened the second period with four consecutive goals by Hyman, Brown, Draisaitl and Perry on just eight shots in the first 12:53 to extend their lead to 5-0. But Vegas, which hit the post on three shots earlier in the contest, got back into the game near the end of the period with two goals in a 26-second span by Olofsson and Hanifin.

The Golden Knights cut it to 5-3 a minute into the third period on a short-handed goal by Howden, who stole the puck from Stuart Skinner behind the goal and then scored on a wraparound into an empty net.

But Jeff Skinner stopped the Vegas comeback momentum just 38 seconds later when he fired in a rebound of a Mattias Ekholm shot from the high slot under Hill's arm to put the Oilers back up by three goals and end the scoring.