EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Connor McDavid had a goal and two assists and added the shootout winner as the Edmonton Oilers got a measure of revenge for last year’s second-round playoff loss to Vegas, defeating the Golden Knights 5-4 on Tuesday night.
“We’ll take wins any way we can get them at this point. Obviously it would be nice to close it out up two with five minutes to go — you expect to close that out — but we will take the win any way we can,” McDavid said.
“Definitely there is momentum in our room. I think we can feel it. I think what we have seen out of our last three (games) and it is something to build off of,” he said.
McDavid has recorded 12 points in his last three games. The Oilers captain has jumped from 108th in the NHL scoring race to a tie for ninth in the span of nine days.
“There is a lot less frustration with him than there was two weeks ago,” said Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch. “But other guys, too. When you win games and get some offense, everyone just feels better about themselves and they’re able to play hockey.”
Sam Gagner, Mattias Janmark and Evander Kane also scored for the Oilers, who have won three in a row.
Mark Stone, Michael Amadio, Ben Hutton and Keegan Kolesar scored for the Golden Knights, who have dropped three straight and lost five of their last six.
“I thought at times the ice was a little tilted in their favor, but we stuck with it the whole way, we never quit the whole time and we were able to squeeze a point out, so it was good,” Hutton said.
Edmonton’s fourth line got the game’s first goal with 6:31 to play in the opening period off a faceoff win as Gagner sent a hopeful shot on net that seemed to surprise Vegas netminder Logan Thompson. It was Gagner’s third of the season.
The Golden Knights pulled even just over a minute into the second period as Stone showed a deft touch in front deflecting a Kaedan Korczak point shot past Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner for his sixth of the campaign.
The Oilers regained the lead five minutes into the middle frame as a Mattias Ekholm blast from the top of the circle hit Thompson and caromed off Janmark in front before trickling into the net for his first of the year.
Vegas responded just 43 seconds later as Amadio was left unmarked off a faceoff win and scored his fourth on a backhand.
McDavid continued his hot play of late with his eighth of the season coming eight minutes into the second period.
Edmonton went up 4-2 with a late second-period power-play marker as the rebound from an Evan Bouchard bomb came to Kane in the blue paint and he scored his 11th of the season and eighth in his last eight games.
“I thought we played a really good game for about 53 minutes there,” Kane said. “We just can’t let leads like that slip away and give a team in our division that we are trying to catch a point.”
UP NEXT
Golden Knights: Wrap up a three-game road trip at Vancouver on Thursday night.
Oilers: At Winnipeg on Thursday night.
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AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/nhl
The Associated Press
