Oilers battle back to tie, 3-3

Manny Malhotra picked up his first goal in a Blue Jackets uniform.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- A fast finish helped the Edmonton Oilers erase an awful start.
Brad Isbister and Radek Dvorak scored third-period goals to help the Oilers grab a 3-3 tie with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday night.
Down 2-0 after a period, the Oilers regrouped.
"We maybe played our worst period of the year," Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish said. "We must have given up five or six odd-man rushes in the first period. That's the one thing you can't do when you're not skating. But we battled back really hard which was an encouraging sign, and we ended up getting a point."
Recap
Ales Hemsky and Isbister each had a goal and an assist for the Oilers, and Dvorak stretched his points streak to six games.
Manny Malhotra picked up his first goal in a Columbus uniform and Geoff Sanderson and Trevor Letowski added scores for the Blue Jackets, 2-0-2-0 in their last four at home.
On a three-on-one break early in the first, Malhotra carried the puck to just inside the right dot, his wrister beating Edmonton goaltender Ty Conklin.
With less than two minutes to go in the period, Sanderson picked up his fourth goal. Rick Nash slid a centering pass to Sanderson who was crashing the net.
"The first 20 minutes we didn't play well at all," Dvorak said. "We came out and gave them a lot of 2-on-1s, 3-on-1s. We said to ourselves, if we want to do something in this game we have to get back to our game -- and we did that in the last 20 minutes."
Hemsky's fifth goal cut the lead to 2-1. Isbister's shot hit the near post and took an odd bounce into the slot where Hemsky chipped it past Columbus goaltender Marc Denis.
Letowski was then able to chop at a rebound that went six feet into the air. It appeared Conklin helped knock the puck in with the back of his glove as he was falling backward.
From right dot
Again the Oilers came back, this time on Isbister's third goal, a bullet from the right dot that beat Denis high on the glove side a little over five minutes into the final period.
They pulled even with 6:51 left. Mike York controlled the puck at the point and passed to Raffi Torres, who carried it down the left wing before throwing a perfect pass through the slot that Dvorak jammed in.
"We should have won that game," Sanderson said. "We're disappointed that we couldn't handle the desperation that they threw at us. To win games, you have to handle waves like that."