The Edmonton Oilers are now the bullies after another statement win

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After a 7-1 win over Minnesota, which was followed by a clear 2-1 win over Tampa Bay, the Oilers improved their game again on Saturday by taking on the Vegas Golden Knights.

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Murderers row? The Oilers are now 3-0 through the first three games of their midseason slate, having beaten the Lightning, Wild and Knights by a combined score of 15-5.

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“It’s a good time for us to play these good teams because we’re playing so well,” said Oilers forward Connor Brown, who contributed a goal and an assist in Saturday’s 6-3 win. “This is a division opponent we will see a lot. It was nice to come out and play our game.”

The Oilers are once again the team to beat in the NHL. Their fifth win in a row makes them the hottest team in the league at the moment.

“We just made the most of our opportunities, it’s just a matter of having the confidence to make plays,” said Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse, who had his second straight two-assist game.

“They did put the pressure on in the second half of the second period and we probably gave up more than we would have liked, but there was a lot of good things about our team in the third period.”

In a wild and sometimes combative show of strength, the Oilers tried to give it their all in the first 35 minutes. They stormed out to a 5-0 lead and caught some breaks as the Golden Knights hit three goalposts and created some close-range chances.

At this point, you half expected Rogers to play Place La Bamba and be done with it.

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Vegas scoring three quick goals with 19 minutes to play to make it 5-3 is something the Oilers will address in their video sessions, but in the end they made their point.

They are as good as anyone in the NHL right now.

“Do I think we played perfectly tonight, no, but we know each other so well against this team that you just have to get the win,” said defender Mattias Ekholm. “We got to 5-0 and took our foot off the gas, which we couldn’t do. This team is far too dangerous. But we set a big goal on the power play to calm things down.”

It was another in a growing list of statement victories. At the start of the season, Edmonton struggled head-to-head with the league’s stronger teams, but now they are the bullies.

“They’re a good team, a division rival, so of course it’s fun to beat them,” said Leon Draisaitl, who had a goal and two assists and 13 points in the last five games. “On the other hand, they would say the same thing. We wanted to put in a good performance tonight and continue what we’ve built.

“I like our game at the moment. I think we’re playing well and starting to find our roles a little bit and our rhythm a little better. Obviously we have some really good teams here so we just want to keep going.”

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The offense the Oilers couldn’t find early in the season is flowing like wine. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman, who were stuck in a black hole when the Oilers struggled in October, are now seeing the light. Hyman’s goal gives him five goals in the last five games after three in the first 20. And the Nugent-Hopkins power play marker gives him five goals in the last 11 games after one in the first 19.

Brown, Corey Perry and Jeff Skinner, who scored the 6-3 goal to quell the Vegas uprising, added the second score.

“Overall, I’m not sure we did anything different,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “There was a little more emphasis on the strikers getting to the net and the D players shooting more accurately. But I think it’s a lot of puck luck that things are going the way we want them to at the moment.”

And like Calvin Pickard in Edmonton’s 7-1 win over Minnesota, the Oilers’ sneaky goaltending went under the radar. But by improving to 5-1 in his last six games, with the only loss coming against Vegas 1-0, Stuart Skinner prevented this game from ever being close.

He made it 5-3 with a terrible surprise goal, but that was the last time they could match it in a 38-save performance.

“Stu was our best player tonight,” Knoblauch said. “I thought he played extremely well. He made a mistake tonight, but that was perhaps our worst defensive play. How many chances we missed tonight… and he made one save after another.

“You need your goalie to make those saves and I think our goalies have been really good the last few weeks and winning us games. If we want to be successful in the long term, we need goalkeepers like that, and that’s the goalkeeper I saw for most of last year.”

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