FINALLY SOME HOPE AT ROGERS PLACE

Oilers get rare second straight win while also adding elusive two points on home ice

It was getting to the point where the Oilers Entertainment Group had to be considering some sort of Christmas bonus or rebate to its customers.

Or maybe a draw for about a dozen plane loads of season ticket holders to fly south for “Guaranteed Win Night” in Las Vegas where the expansion Golden Knights have won the most home games in the Western Conference with 13.

The Oilers Entertainment Group stable of squads — NHL and WHL — had won nine of 34 games at Rogers Place this season.

Oilers: five of 15.

Oil Kings: four of 19.

But with a 5-3 home win over the San Jose Sharks Monday, here’s a thought that probably hadn’t occurred to many, if any, to this point of the proceedings.

If this isn’t yet another false alarm, another tiny tease to be followed by more major meltdowns, this could turn out to be kind of fun.

If the Edmonton Oilers’ first pair of back-to-back wins in regulation of the season and only the third set of two-game winning streaks is an indication of what’s to come in this season of Snakes and Ladders, the ladders part going forward could be excellent entertainment.

Monday night, with their eighth win in 10 games against San Jose, including playoffs, this calendar year, the Oilers moved within six points of the Sharks and the third non-wild-card playoff position in the Pacific Division.

With the win, which made it their seventh in the last 11, the Oilers moved into position to escape 14th place in the Western Conference — where they’ve taken up residence all season — and can finally begin climbing the ladder.

With 32 points, Edmonton moved within two points of the slumping Vancouver Canucks and Colorado Avalanche and four back of the Anaheim Ducks.

That, of course, is if you can conveniently manage to ignore the fact the (10-4-2 on the road) St Louis Blues and (6-3-1 in their last 10) Montreal Canadiens stand between them and a Merry Christmas and the dizzying heights of a 17-17-2 Gary Bettman loser point .500 record.

And with St. Louis on Thursday, the Oilers have yet to win two at home back to back yet this season, so it would definitely be premature to suggest anything has actually happened here yet.

Until Monday, the Oilers had a ridiculous record of 2-11 trying (that might not be the right word) to follow a win with another win.

But Todd McLellan’s team came to the rink with more up arrows than they’ve had in a while as goaltender Cam Talbot returned for his second straight game to record his fifth straight win and Adam Larsson returned from the injured list to play like he’d never been away.

While the penalty kill unit gave up the first goal of the game (of course they did) to make it the 21st time in 34 games that the Oilers have started off down 1-0, their body language didn’t suddenly go bad.

Mark Letestu got the penalty kill goal back and Ryan Strome scored the milestone 10,000th goal in Oilers history to give the Oilers a 3-1 lead they never relinquished.

Oilers, three games into a 38-game run where they don’t play a game in the Eastern time zone, have entered the make-their-move stage of their schedule.

For the Oilers, to be specific, it’s all about the Pacific.

Like Cliff Fletcher with the Calgary Flames in the Oilers dominated Smythe Division in the 1980s, general manager Peter Chiarelli built this team to compete in the Pacific. They did that very well last year and made it to Game 7 against the Anaheim Ducks of winning the Pacific Division in the playoffs.

With the win, the Oilers are now 5-1 against the Pacific this year and have a 24-7-3 record in their last 34 games with 22 to come this year beginning with Los Angeles here to begin the new year.

When you get on a roll, it can be a lot of fun and the freeze-frame for that probably came in the second period when Patrick Maroon found himself in a pile with Brent Burns and playfully stroked his considerable beard.

You just don’t do stuff like that when you’re stinking the joint out.

First, he pulled Burns beard, then he pulled the trigger to put the Oilers up 4-2 in the third to put this one away. It would prove to be the winner.

The Oilers Entertainment Group stable of squads — NHL and WHL — had won nine of 34 games at Rogers Place ...