Edmonton Oilers fall flat in Game 3 against Vegas Golden Knights

Vegas Golden Knights rolled to a convincing 5-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers Monday night at Rogers Place, to take a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven second round series.“I didn’t think we skated well, I didn’t think we were hard enough in certain areas and to a man, not our finest hour in any way,” Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft said.“To dress tonight up any other way than ‘not good enough’ would be false.”“Forty eight hours ago, we played a game that we really liked,” Captain Connor McDavid said.“Forty eight hours later, we’re talking about not a very good one.

Our game is not gone — it’s not far — obviously we need our best in Game 4.”The Oilers scored 2:45 into the game when Derek Ryan found Warren Foegele for a chip-in goal — his first of the playoffs.The Golden Knights outplayed the Oilers the rest of the period.Jonathan Marchessault scored less than two minutes after Foegele, then struck again in the final minute of the frame when he tapped in a pass from  Jack Eichel.“It’s the playoffs — there’s going to be momentum swings and ups and downs and all that type of stuff, and obviously we saw that tonight,” McDavid said.Zach Whitecloud beat Stuart Skinner short side over the glove 7:25 into the second, then Eichel made it 4-1 on an open look after Evan Bouchard fell down.Jack Campbell replaced Skinner, who allowed four goals on 23 shots.“You come into the series expecting it to be a long one,” Darnell Nurse said after the game.“It’s a very good team on the other side — one of the hottest teams coming into the playoffs, and we’re a good team ourselves and have a lot of faith and confidence in our game, but we need to bring it each and every night and we haven’t done it consistently enough in the first three.