Oilers fragrant in defeat at home

This was Outhouse City, folks.

A stink-the-joint-out of monumental proportions by the Edmonton Oilers, who went through the motions when desperation was required on the way to crashing 5-0 against the Buffalo Sabres Tuesday night.

The same Sabres who have the second-fewest points in the league and have now won two in a row for the first time in three months. They beat Calgary 2-1 in overtime Monday, then put the boots to the Oilers, who came in with a threegame winning streak and never looked like they were interested.

Completely baffling for a team whose playoff hopes were hanging by a thread against a team that had 105 goals in 47 games coming into this one, yet made the Oilers look as bad as they’ve been.

It flew against the thoughts of the Oilers coming in.

“When you get a streak going, you get that momentum and you have a really good feeling going into games, even when that puck hasn’t even dropped yet,” said Oscar Klefbom.

Uh, not quite.

The 30th-ranked Sabres did what every team does against the Oilers at home — score on their power plays. The abysmal Oilers penalty kill gave up three in three tries over a combined 2:07 in the first two periods as Sam Reinhart (deflection), Jack Eichel (screened bullet) and Ryan O’Reilly (slot) scored. The first two were on Cam Talbot with Eichel’s wrister sending him to the bench with a 4-0 hole, giving opposing teams 33 power-play goals in 24 Oilers games at home.

After a sleepy first period, when Reinhart had the only goal with Adam Larsson in the box, O’Reilly got a rebound past Talbot 17 seconds into the middle period.

Then Zemgus Girgensons had one go off his skate on a two-onone with Eichel, who had three assists to go with his goal, deftly getting the puck past the pinching Larsson.

In the fourth meeting between the top two 2015 draft picks, Eichel was all over the stats sheet and Connor McDavid had one of his quietest nights of the season.

The third period was academic as the Sabres beat the numbingly bad Oilers — who never made Robin Lehner make even a five-bell save — for a fourth straight time over the past two seasons and at Rogers Place, where they’ve outscored them 11-2.