It took more than two and a half periods, but the Edmonton Oilers made their first lead against the Colorado Avalanche stick in a 6-4 win at home on Wednesday.

The Oilers tied the game at one, two and four before Patrick O' Sullivan slid a loose puck in the slot past the Avs' Peter Budaj with 8:53 to go for the eventual game-winner.

Edmonton's Ales Hemsky clinched the game with an empty-net goal with 16 seconds remaining.

The win snaps the Oilers (9-10-3) four game winless skid while the Avalanche (13-6-3) drop their fourth in the last five games.

Oilers goalie Jeff Deslauriers had a rough start, giving up four goals on the first nine shots he faced, but emerged the winner in the battle of the backups between Budaj and himself.

Budaj was asked to be sharp early when his teammate Brett Clark took a penalty 1:34 into the game. The Avs' second stringer answered the call by making three key saves — including one point-blank stop on Shawn Horcoff — to keep his team from digging themselves an early hole.

With Darcy Tucker and Brett Clark in the box, the game shifted to 4-on-4, and that gave Milan Hejduk some extra ice to manoeuvre yet the sniper parked himself in the busiest part of the ice.

Avs' defenceman Tom Preissing launched a pass to Hejduk — who had Tom Gilbert on his back at the top of the Oilers' crease — and the right wing beat Deslauriers to make it 1-0.

Horcoff restored the tie with 3:21 to go in the first period by potting a loose puck Budaj couldn't gobble up off an Ales Hemsky shot from just inside the point.

Hejduk didn't allow the Oilers to square things up for long — after watching Matt Duchesne outwork the Edmonton defence behind Deslauriers, Hejduk took a pass from the rookie and fired a hard shot between the legs of the Oilers goalie to make it 2-1 heading into the second period.

Brule's rocket ties it at 2

Only 21 seconds into the middle frame, Gilbert Brule absolutely hammered a shot underneath the blocker arm of Budaj to knot the game at two.

The back and forth continued when David Jones restored the Colorado lead by using Ladislav Smid as a screen to fool Deslauriers with a snapshot about two strides inside the Edmonton blue line.

Midway through the second, Avalanche defenceman Kyle Cumiskey made it a two-goal cushion. The Oilers goalie dropped into the butterfly and allowed the short-side shot to whistle past his right ear and into the top corner.

Soon after, Colorado's Ryan Wilson stood up Ethan Moreau at centre ice, leading Zack Stortini to drop the gloves, earning himself an instigator penalty.

Moreau left the Edmonton bench with three minutes to go in the second and did not reappear in the third. The Avs went on the power play nonetheless — which was increased to a 5-on-3 when Souray was tagged with a roughing penalty.

Edmonton killed the first of two infractions before O'Sullivan was called for tripping, giving Colorado another 19 seconds of time on the two-man advantage.

Deslauriers and the Oilers penalty kill got themselves out of the jam and were rewarded with a power play of their own with 2:40 to go.

While they didn't manage a shot during the man advantage, Edmonton's Sam Gagner converted a rebound off a shot by Lubomir Visnovski with less than 16 seconds to go in the period to bring the Oilers within one.

It didn't take the Oilers long to tie the game up for the third time. Ryan Potulny's second of the season, a power play marker 2:45 into the final period, made it 4-4 and allowed O'Sullivan to notch the winner nine minutes later.