EDMONTON, AB – The Edmonton Oilers squeaked past the Vancouver Canucks in the shootout on Monday night with a 3-2 victory at Rogers Place in their final home game of the preseason.

After Corey Perry and Ben Gleason found the scoresheet in the third period, the Oilers and Canucks were blanked in overtime to set up Leon Draisaitl’s slap shot in Round 2 of the shootout before Viktor Arvidsson notched the winner against goaltender Kevin Lankinen to secure the victory in Round 3 for the Blue & Orange.

Making his second pre-season appearance, Oilers’ goaltender Stuart Skinner stopped 21 of 23 shots, while captain Connor McDavid contributed assists on both of Edmonton’s tallies in the final frame.

The Oilers have two pre-season contests remaining as they hit the road to face Seattle (Wednesday) and Vancouver (Friday) before facing Winnipeg in the season opener at Rogers Place on Oct. 9.

FIRST PERIOD

The Oilers and Canucks played a scoreless first period that began with the Blue & Orange’s new-look line of Skinner, Draisaitl and Arvidsson heading up the ice up on their first rush of the preseason. The trio nearly orchestrated a nice tic-tac-toe for Arvidsson to finish off in the right circle, but Leon Draisaitl’s no-look backhand pass from just outside the blue paint missed the stick of the Swedish forward.

The line combinations didn’t matter near the 13-minute mark when Josh Brown and Phillip Di Giuseppe traded penalties to give Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl a twirl at four-on-four, but the Oilers’ best scoring chance came on the power play just before the period’s midway mark after Draisaitl found Arvidsson in between the hash marks for a turnaround one-timer that Kevin Lankinen pushed aside to keep it scoreless.

Goaltender Stuart Skinner continues to round into regular-season form after making seven first-period saves for the Oilers, including a blind sprawling stop where the starter lunged across the crease and got to Ty Mueller’s effort from the left circle that was set up with a sweet cross-ice feed from Nate Smith.

The Oilers held a slim 8-7 shot advantage through a scoreless opening 20 minutes.

SECOND PERIOD

This time, Skinner couldn’t slide across and prevent the Canucks from taking a one-goal lead on the power play at 14:07 of the middle frame.

Forward Drake Caggiula was assessed a holding penalty against Mark Friedman that led to last season’s top-two scorer for the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks letting go of a quick wrist shot from the left circle that eluded the blocker of Skinner as he lunged across the crease, giving the Canucks a 1-0 lead.

Bains played eight NHL games for the Canucks in 2023-24 and is expected to play a much bigger role this season for Edmonton’s rivals from the West Coast

The Oilers managed seven shots in the second period, with their best opportunity to equalize came on a breakaway for forward Corey Perry, who accepted a two-line stretch pass McDavid before losing the handle on the puck as he tried to sneak it back around Lankinen’s right pad at 10:39 of the frame.

THIRD PERIOD

Remember that nifty move from Perry that just lacked the finish?

This time, the 39-year-old put it all together on the game-tying goal early in the third period – including another tidy pass from McDavid that made the play happen.

The Oilers captain dropped a reverse pass in the left circle to Perry to pull a defender with him and open up space for Perry to dangle his way across the goal line and through the blue paint to score a sublime equalizer at the far post, making it 1-1 with over 15 minutes left in the third period.

It wasn’t long after when Perry dropped his mitts in defence of McDavid, taking an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the process after trying to pull forward Pius Suter away from his captain as the two became wrapped up with one another near the top of the circles in Vancouver’s own zone.

The Oilers found themselves on the power play near the 10-minute mark of the final frame, where defenceman Ben Gleason took his time at the top of the left circle to pick his spot under the glove of Lankinen for a short-lived 2-1 lead.

Just 19 seconds later, Nate Smith got the goal back for the Canucks with the deflection from the right circle on Kirill Kudryavtsev’s waist-high effort that evaded Skinner’s gear to make it 2-2.

Despite almost half a period left, we were bound for overtime.

OVERTIME & SHOOTOUT

After the Oilers had multiple looks on odd-man rushes to settle the contest, Draisaitl was the first to find twine in the shootout with a ridiculous slap shot from between the circles that the German tucked under the crossbar to put the onus on the Canucks to score.

Forward Jonathan Lekkermaiki struck the post on Vancouver’s next attempt, leading to Arvidsson ending the game in the third round of the shootout by outwaiting Lankinen and tucking a backhand into the empty cage beyond the sprawled-out Canucks’ netminder.

Final score: Oilers 3, Canucks 2.