Battles for first place rarely mean much in December, except in the crammed NHL Northwest Division.

Jarret Stoll and Shawn Horcoff scored 14 seconds apart in the third period as the hometown Edmonton Oilers beat the Minnesota Wild 3-1 before a capacity crowd of 16,839 at Rexall Place on Thursday.

Matt Greene scores his first NHL goal in Thursday's 3-1 Oilers home win.
(Jason Scott/Canadian Press)

"We capitalized and took advantage of the opportunities that we had," Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish said. "We had a real good start to the third and took the momentum of the game and it just carried through."

With the win, the Oilers (17-12-2) moved two points ahead of Minnesota (16-13-2) atop the division standings.

The Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks trail front-running Edmonton by three points, with the Colorado Avalanche six points in arrears.

"Any win against a team in our division is, obviously, a big one," Stoll said. "It is so tight."

Stoll was the best skater on the ice, forechecking with reckless abandon and extending his point streak to six games with one goal and one assist.

"We got in and got the pucks," he said. "We were physical and their defence was looking over their shoulders, at times.

"We had a lot of guys flying out there. And though it didn't show on the scoreboard for some of them, they were doing a lot."

White and Greene 

Todd White opened the scoring on the Wild's first shot of the contest, feigning a pass before firing a shot by Dwayne Roloson for his eighth goal of the season at 3:59 of the first period.

It remained 1-0 until Stoll won a faceoff to Matt Greene, who dashed aggressively to the net and froze Manny Fernandez with a backhand deke for his first NHL goal at 3:33 of the third period.

"It's good to finally get it over with and to have that done," Greene said. "I think I'm No. 20 on the shootout list."

Stoll later pounced on a Marc-Andre Bergeron rebound and, with defenceman Keith Carney draped all over him, netted his eighth at the 15:22 mark.

Moments later, Horcoff split the defence and fooled Fernandez with a nifty backhander for his fourth, an unassisted goal with 4:24 remaining.  

"It was just a matter of time before that game went to one side or the other," Wild head coach Jacques Lemaire explained. "We played good for a good part of the game but, at the right time, when we needed a little bit more intensity, we didn't get it."

Minnesota took six of eight encounters from Edmonton last season, including all four at Rexall Place.

With files from Sports Network