Firewagon hockey

EDMONTON -- Only one of the teams that blazed up and down the Rexall Place ice Wednesday night might make the playoffs this spring, and it's not going to be the Edmonton Oilers.

It might not be the Toronto Maple Leafs either, if they don't find a way to tighten up their game considerably. Which is kind of sad, when you think about it.

"It's not a coach’s dream, to trade chances like that," Leafs goalie James Reimer said after a frenetic, 4-3 overtime win. "But for us goalies, well, it's never a dull moment."

Think of 1,000 adjectives to describe the game played Wednesday, between the National Hockey League's 15th and 29th place teams, and the word "dull" would not be among them.

Hectic? Sure.

Firewagon hockey? No doubt.

But dull, this game was certainly not.

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If this was one of those games they say coaches hate, then perhaps we should get new coaches. If this brand of hockey can't win playoff series', then someone alert the Competition Committee.

There is no doubt the fans got their money's worth, but ultimately, the question remains: Can a team win playing this way?

"Well, we did. And we beat them last time too," said Leafs coach Ron Wilson, referring to last week's 6-3 win at the Air Canada Centre. "That's the way Edmonton plays the game, but I thought it actually set us off on our losing streak.

"When you get some free looks like we were getting (from Edmonton), you tend to forget about your own end a bit. It's tough to break out of that back-and-forth cycle they play in."

Dion Phaneuf charged back heroically to lift Ryan Whitney's stick on an Oilers three-on-one in overtime. The puck slipped to Joffrey Lupul, who took it the length of the ice to set up Tim Connolly for a tap-in overtime winner. Lupul also scored on a plus-2 night for the Fort Saskatchewan native -- a suburb of Edmonton -- and the Leafs broke a season-high four-game losing streak to build a three-point cushion over ninth-place Washington, which has two games in hand.

Toronto scored on two of its first three shots to lead 2-0 just 98 seconds into the game. Edmonton blazed back with goals by Ben Eager and Taylor Hall to leave the game tied at 2-2 after 40 minutes.

"If not for those first two minutes of the game, we win by two goals," lamented Hall, who scored his 20th of the season and was simply electric on this night. "We did do everything humanly possible to get back in that game. When you scratch and claw like that to tie it up, only to lose it in overtime, it's disheartening."

Jake Gardiner's powerplay blast made it 3-2 for Toronto, but the Oilers charged back with Jordan Eberle's laser just under the crossbar, tying the game with 4:04 to play. The Leafs thwarted Edmonton's powerplay over the last two minutes of regulation, a mammoth kill considering they leave here with two points, after being outscored 10-1 in their past two games.

"They've got a great bunch of forwards over there," Reimer marveled of the Oilers. "They do some amazing things."

But the Oilers' defence? Not so much.

Toronto either, really. The two make amazing bedfellows, but if either team has dreams of taking this thing anywhere in the playoffs, they both have to tighten the screws of their defensive game significantly.

For now though, boy, is it fun to watch.

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca