Draisaitl gets 3 points, Oilers defeat Golden Knights for 5th win in row

EDMONTON -- Leon Draisaitl extended his multipoint streak to five games with a goal and two assists for the Edmonton Oilers, who won their fifth straight game with a 6-3 victory against the Vegas Golden Knights at Rogers Place on Saturday.

Draisaitl has five goals and eight assists during the streak for the Oilers, who are third in the Pacific Division, five points behind the first-place Golden Knights.

“They are a good team, a division rival. It’s fun beating them, of course,” Draisaitl said. “They’d say the same on the other side. We wanted to have a good showing tonight and continue what we have been building.

“I like our game right now. I think we’re playing well and starting to find our roles a little bit and our rhythm a little bit better. Obviously, we have some really good teams coming up here, so we are just looking to continue that.”

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Connor Brown each had a goal and an assist, and Stuart Skinner made 38 saves for the Oilers (18-10-2), who have won eight of nine.

"Stu was our best player tonight, I thought he played extremely well. He made one mistake tonight, but that was maybe our worst game that we defended,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “The amount of chances that we gave up tonight and he made save after save. You need your goalie to make those saves, and I think our goaltenders have been really good the last few weeks and are winning us games.

“Obviously, we’re very happy with Stu and we need goaltending like that if we’re going to have success long-term, and this is the goaltending that I saw pretty much all of last year.”

Noah Hanifin had two assists, and Adin Hill made 28 saves for the Golden Knights (19-8-3), who had won four straight.

“I think we competed until the end, tried to play the right way and stay on our game. Not turn five into 10, especially with that team, they can do that in a hurry,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “So, I thought we tried to check well, especially their top guys, not giving them many chances. And that’s how it ended.”

Nugent-Hopkins gave the Oilers a 1-0 lead at 17:36 of the first period with a power-play goal. He took a drop pass from Connor McDavid on the rush and beat Hill with a snap shot from the left circle.

Zach Hyman made it 2-0 at 1:13 of the second period, stuffing in a rebound with a backhand at the top of the crease after a shot by Nugent-Hopkins.

Brown pushed it to 3-0 at 6:53, finishing a rebound below the left circle after Hill kicked away Draisaitl’s shot on a 2-on-1 rush.

Draisaitl made it 4-0 at 10:46, tapping in a backhanded cross-crease pass from Darnell Nurse at the left post.

Corey Perry pushed the lead to 5-0 at 12:53 with a snap shot from the high slot past Hill’s glove through traffic.

Victor Olofsson cut it to 5-1 at 15:35 with a one-timer in the slot off a pass from Tomas Hertl below the goal line, and Ivan Barbashev redirected a shot in front to make it 5-2 at 16:01.

“We started turning the puck over between the blue lines and they all end up in our net,” Barbashev said. “There were a lot of details in our D-zone, we’d been on a really good stretch defensively in the past five or six games and have done a really good job. Today, it just wasn’t there, those little details that got away and that’s how they scored all five goals, basically.

“It’s like a little wake-up call, we’ve got to just get back to our normal game and regroup. We’ve just got to turn the page and be better.”

Brett Howden scored short-handed to make it 5-3 at 1:00 of the third, stealing the puck from Skinner behind the net and putting it into an open goal.

Jeff Skinner responded 38 seconds later to make it 6-3 when he found a rebound in the slot and beat Hill with a snap shot.

“You can’t give up the next goal, obviously. And obviously they’re a good hockey team, they’re probably going to be on alert after that,” Cassidy said. “They’re going to be back on their toes, it’s human nature to let the foot off the gas a little bit when you get ahead, we’ve been there and done it.

“But we gave up the next one, unfortunately, and that probably took the wind out of our sails.”

NOTES: It is Draisaitl’s sixth multipoint streak of at least five games in his career, passing Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche for second-most among active players. McDavid has the most with 12 multipoint streaks of at least five games. … Jack Eichel (nine goals, 31 assists) set the Golden Knights mark for fewest games to 40 points in a season, previously held by Mark Stone in 2020-21 (32 games).