  Edmonton Oilers' Gilbert Brule reaches out for the loose puck in front of Phoenix Coyotes' Ilya Bryzgalov. (CANADIAN PRESS/Jimmy Jeong)
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Don't worry about having to cancel the Palm Springs trip, boys, you'll be golfing soon enough.
The road to an early summer is paved with well-played losses and the Oilers turned in another one last night, inching their season one step closer to the inevitable with their 10th defeat in the last 11 games.
They came back came back from 2-0 and 4-2 deficits to force overtime, but with Fernando Pisani in the penalty box in his first game back after two months on the shelf with colitis, Shane Doan clinched the 5-4 victory for the visiting Phoenix Coyotes.
"The one in overtime was a tough one," said head coach Pat Quinn. "The back referee calls it from 100 feet away in a battle for the puck. We actually had the puck. It's easy to see on a replay afterwards that there was a bit of an embellishment there, but that happens in this game."
It was a ticky-tack call on Pisani, but no worse than the absolutely brutal blunder referee Ian Walsh made in disallowing the third period goal that would have made it 5-2 Phoenix. So call it even on a night when the officials were the worst guys on the ice.
"The bottom line is we have to be better on our penalty killing," said Sheldon Souray. "You have to allow your physical players to play physically. We have to be confident that when we take penalties we're going to kill them off and that hasn't been the case the last little while."
The Oilers weren't half bad, otherwise. They carried the play for a lot of the game and outshot the Coyotes 42-30, but glaring mistakes at inopportune times sunk them again.
"Definitely a disappointing loss but we can definitely take a lot out of it," said Sam Gagner. "We battled hard, we got some goals, more goals than we've had in the last few games, and we were able to show a lot of character in coming back."
The Coyotes, meanwhile, rolled into Edmonton and proved that having an billionaire owner means very little. They were National Hockey League orphans when the season began, but extended their lead over Daryl Katz's Oilers to 20 points with the victory. With the Oilers in the toilet and the World Juniors on TV, Rexall Place was filled with empty seats for the second time in the last four games.
"We've got the opposite here, we've got a good owner, good fans, we have everything that should be motivating factors for us, and we're not a team like they are," said Quinn. "It's a pretty good looking club."
Phoenix went up 2-0 when Radim Vrbata scored at 12:32 of the first and Doan at 7:38 into the second, but Edmonton fought back with two goals in two minutes - Gilbert Brule's slapper at 11:37 and Patrick O'Sullivan's beautiful backhand on a breakaway at 13:45.
But as quickly as the Oilers erased the two-goal deficit, Phoenix restored it on goals from Martin Hanzal at 14:47 and Petr Prucha at 17:54.
But by this point, with the World Junior final being shown on the scoreboard, almost nobody was paying attention to what was happening on the ice.
It's a move that didn't sit well with the Oilers.
"Obviously it's a big game," said Gagner. "But we definitely want to focus on what we have to do. The talk on the bench was not looking up on the board. What else can you say about it?"
After Walsh robbed the Coyotes by waving off a goal because Ed Jovanovski had a heel in the crease, Edmonton came to life.
Denis Grebeshkov made it 4-3 and then, in a bitter twist of irony, Dustin Penner tied it while practically sitting on Phoenix goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.
It didn't matter, though, when Doan ripped his OT winner on the power play.
ROBERT.TYCHKOWSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA
