from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

To win 16 straight hockey games takes more than just strong defence, great goaltending and timely scoring. It takes some breaks.

Frankly, you tend to need more than your share of the luck to win every game since Dec. 21, 2023. And even though the old hockey maxim decrees that a good team earns its luck, eventually you run up against another good team, and they deserve some too.

A near-record winning streak is forged on a wide-open net missed by the Blackhawks one night, when you’re down 1-0. It’s a post-and-in for the Oilers at Montreal, but a post-and-out when Nazem Kadri is shooting in Calgary.

This much we know to be true: the Oilers played far better in a 3-1 loss that ended their 16-game win streak in Vegas Tuesday night than they had on two or three nights where they’d found a way to extend the streak over the past 47 days.

They just ran out of fortune. Used it all up, really.

“Yeah, yeah,” agreed Connor McDavid. “We had a lot of things go right, obviously. Winning 16 straight, you’ve got to have a lot of things go well. You’ve got to get some bounces, and we got some bounces. But for the most part, I thought we went out and earned our bounces and earned our luck.

“Credit to (Vegas). Tonight they make the shot.”

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Game highlights are below.