Edmonton centre Marc-Antoine Pouliot (78) puts the body on Phoenix's Mikkel Boedker in the early going of the Oilers' 4-2 victory. (Jimmy Jeong/Canadian Press)

Sheldon Souray and Andrew Cogliano scored in the third period to lead the Edmonton Oilers to a 4-2 victory over the visiting Phoenix Coyotes on Monday night.

The victory came against a Wayne Gretzky coached team that had gone 6-2-2 in December, a stretch that had seen Phoenix give up just two goals in the final 20 minutes coming in.

Zack Stortini and Marc Pouliot had scored in the first to build a 2-0 Edmonton lead that disappeared in the second period courtesy of Martin Hanzal and Enver Lisin.

Edmonton improves to 15-14-3 with the victory while Phoenix is now 16-14-4.

"That game ended a whole lot better than it could have," Oilers coach Craig MacTavish said. "We lost the momentum in that game in the second. We didn't have a great second but we rallied in the third and were pretty decent there."

The key moment of the game came while the ice was still drying at the start of the third period.

Already killing a penalty, Phoenix's Viktor Tikhonov tried to lift Erik Cole's stick with his own but instead got the Oilers' attacker right in the mouth, drawing blood.

That gave Edmonton a two-man advantage that coach MacTavish set up by using his time out.

Throwing the puck around the outside of the defensive box smartly, the Oilers power play found Souray at the right point and he blasted the puck by Mikael Tellqvist for the go-ahead marker.

Phoenix killed the rest of Tikhonov's penalty and tried to mount a charge of their own.

Any hope the Coyotes had of a late comeback went out the window when Olli Jokinen took a holding penalty and Daniel Carcillo added to the pain by talking his way into an unsportsmanlike conduct call.

That gave the Oilers a two-man advantage and they came up with the clincher when Ales Hemsky at one side of the crease found Cogliano at the other side for an easy goal.

"You give them three five-on-threes and it's going to hurt you and obviously tonight it did," Coyotes captain Shane Doan said.

Edmonton out in hurry

Stortini found his first goal of the year in the middle of an opening period scrum that formed in Tellqvist's crease, jamming it through for a 1-0 Edmonton lead.

Less than two minutes later the margin doubled, this time off a nice transition play.

Coming in at the end of a two-on-two rush, Cogliano put a pretty pass across to Pouliot, who buried his fifth by Tellqvist for 2-0.

Phoenix spent much of the opening frame in penalty trouble, but were able to get into the dressing room with no more damage done.

Gretzky was able to calm the visitors down and they began to take over the contest in the second period and ultimately it paid off in a goal as the Oilers began to back in on their own net.

With seven players sitting on Dwayne Roloson's crease (only three of them Coyotes), Hanzal was able to pick out the puck and fire it through all those legs at 12:23, closing the gap to 2-1.

They had it even before the period was done, this time on a power play and again with too much traffic in front of the goal.

Veteran Ed Jovanovski cruised down to the bottom of the left circle with the puck before putting the disk back to the high slot where Enver Lisin converted at 17:37.

Phoenix outshot Edmonton 17-5 in the second.