Red Wings hold off Oilers for fourth straight win

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jiri Hudler scored twice to help the streaking Detroit Red Wings hold off the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 in the NHL on Thursday.

Edmonton scored two goals in 21 seconds to pull within one, but the Red Wings held on to beat the Oilers for the second time in three days and notch their fourth straight victory.

Red Wings, the current Stanley Cup holders, improved to 13-2-3 on the season and are 6-0-1 in their last seven games.

Edmonton was coming off a seven-goal explosion against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday and made things interesting late against Detroit.

Lubomir Visnovsky and Sheldon Souray beat Detroit goalie Chris Osgood on consecutive shots to make it 4-3 with 6:45 left to play but the Oilers just came up short.

Osgood finished with 31 saves and the Red Wings killed off a late power-play to preserve the victory.

Detroit took an early advantage with three goals in the first period.

Hudler sparked things with a wrist shot just 1:50 into the contest while Pavel Datsyuk and Tomas Kopecky followed that with power-play goals as the Red Wings raced to a 3-0 advantage.

Andrew Cogliano put the Oilers (9-9-2) on the board on a power play at 13:19 in the second period.

Oilers goalie Dwayne Roloson was relieved by Mathieu Garon in the first period after allowing three goals on just 10 shots.

(Reporting by Jahmal Corner; Editing by Alastair Himmer)