What was it Tom Renney was saying the other day about Sam Gagner's magical, eight-point night?

Oh, yes, that Gagner's scoring blitz could be the single most galvanizing event the team will experience all season.

A real, live team-building exercise, in effect, that could help propel the Oilers to a strong finish in a challenging, injury-marred season.

Well, on Saturday night, the Oilers were nothing if not a unified team, though hardly a flawless one, in beating the NHL's gold standard, the first-place Detroit Red Wings, by 5-4 in a shootout on Saturday night.

It was a nifty touch that rookie Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, in his first game back from a shoulder injury, buried the shootout game winner.

The coach was clearly onto something the other day and the evidence was all over the place from the puck-drop on out.

It wasn't just that Gagner, incredibly, banged in the game's first goal during an Oilers power play, just 2: 42 into the game.

That certainly couldn't have harmed sales of the Gagner jerseys on offer at the concessions stands Saturday, and at the price point of $89.89, funnily enough.

Nor was it just that Gagner went on to set up Jordan Eberle for Edmonton's second goal and bang in the Oilers' third goal of the period at 19: 59 of the opening period, to give the Oilers a 3-1 lead.

Nor was it his shootout goal - everybody knew he would score in the shootout, didn't they?

Mind you, that magical encore by Gagner was uncanny, even if a three-point first period was comparatively small beer, considering he had a five-point third period on Thursday night.

Gagner also committed an egregious giveaway on Detroit's first goal, by Valtteri Filppula, a shorthanded effort at 19: 23 of the opening period.

No, it was also Corey Potter stepping up and roughing up Niklas Kronwall after the hard-rock Red Wings defenceman flattened winger Ales Hemsky with a massive bodycheck, catching the Oilers player with his head down coming up the rightwing boards.

Kronwall has managed to perfect a predatory high hit that still falls within the NHL's legal guidelines. Hemsky suffered a bloody nose when hit by Kronwall and went to the locker-room, as per the league's protocol, to be monitored for concussion symptoms.

Hemsky later returned, but he was really shaken up on the play.

In the tribal world of the NHL, clean hit or not, you respond to one of your stars being clobbered by an opponent and the Oilers sure did that.

Defenceman Ladislav Smid hit Henrik Zetterberg from behind into the corner boards, a blatant penalty, but payback nonetheless for the Hemsky hit.

Still in the opening period, Ben Eager engaged Mike Commodore in a fight, cuffing the gangly redhead soundly.

Part of the NHL's lore, too, is that the team-oriented penalty is easier to kill than the selfish one and this night, that proved out, too, dubious though that dictum might sound, on the surface.

Potter earned a double minor for smacking Kronwall and was joined by Smid for his infraction on Zetterberg.

The Oilers, known more for their third-ranked power play than their 15th-ranked penalty kill, erased the manpower advantages, earning a massive roar from the Rexall Place crowd of 16,839 in the bargain.

As a team, the Oilers remain several bricks shy of a load - key pieces of a competitive roster are missing.

But they displayed some important elements of teamwork on Saturday night, elements like grit that have not always been present this season.

They were doing this against the Red Wings, also, whose attention detail is sui generis in hockey, as is their collective poise.

Sure enough, Detroit dialed up the offensive-zone pressure and, on goals by Todd Bertuzzi and Drew Miller, tied the game 3-3 in the third period.

At 16: 19, it was Bertuzzi with a nifty move to avoid an ill-considered open-ice hit by Andy Sutton, who ripped a high-hard one past Oilers goaltender Devan Dubnyk for the apparent game winner.

But the Oilers, who played runand-gun with the Blackhawks in that 8-4 win on Thursday night, weren't done. Eberle finished off a three-way passing to tie the game 4-4 with 38 seconds left in regulation.

So now the Oilers have accumulated points in five straight games, four of them victories over San Jose, Colorado, Chicago and Detroit.

This stretch represents big strides for a team still taking baby steps in its rebuild. Big and entertaining strides, at that.

jmackinnon@edmontonjournal.com

Twitter.com/rjmackinnon Check out my blog, Sweatsox, at edmontonjournal.com/blogs