TORONTO - The Toronto Maple Leafs are doing everything they can to stay out of the NHL's basement.
The youthful top line of Tyler Bozak, Nikolai Kulemin and Phil Kessel combined for eight points Saturday as the Leafs beat the 30th-place Edmonton Oilers 6-4, giving Toronto its first three-game winning streak of the season.
Kessel had two goals and an assist while Bozak finished with a goal and two assists and Kulemin had a goal and an assist.
John Mitchell and Mikhail Grabovski had the other goals for Toronto (23-33-12), which plays in Long Island on Sunday.
Andrew Cogliano, Gilbert Brule, Dustin Penner and Aaron Johnson replied for the Oilers (21-40-7).
A meeting of the league's cellar-dwellers included nine skaters with less than 100 games of NHL experience and three rookie goaltenders - Jonas Gustavsson for Toronto and Edmonton's Jeff Deslauriers and Devan Dubnyk, who was sent in to start the third period.
Even though the teams sat 29th and 30th in the overall standings, the position means different things for each of them. Edmonton will likely end up with the best chance of winning the draft lottery after the regular season and potentially picking first overall while the Leafs are hoping their selection ends up being lower since it belongs to Boston as part of the trade that landed Kessel.
Toronto is now nine points ahead of Edmonton in the overall standings and has the chance to reel in a few more teams if it continues the current hot streak.
The Leafs opened up Saturday's game shortly after Cogliano had scored to narrow the score to 2-1. Mitchell, Kessel and Grabovski replied with goals one minute 26 seconds apart - the last two coming on a Leafs power play that hadn't struck since before the Olympic break.
A fairly lifeless game perked up during a scrum around Deslauriers midway through the second period. The frustrated Oilers goaltender hit tough guy Colton Orr with a couple punches before trading a few more with Leafs defenceman Dion Phaneuf.
Phaneuf found himself back in the Oilers bad book after taking the feet out from under Ryan Potulny in the third period, getting tackled by Theo Peckham shortly after.
Edmonton continued its parade to the penalty box as the period wore on and Kessel scored the Leafs third power-play goal of the evening at 15:38. Johnson got that goal back on a 5-on-3 for Edmonton with less than a minute remaining.
It was another long night for veteran Oilers coach Pat Quinn, who was behind the bench for an NHL game at Air Canada Centre for the first time since being fired by the Leafs after the 2006 season. He was featured in a small tribute video during the first period that ended with the saying: "Welcome back, Pat."
The Leafs haven't qualified for the playoffs since Quinn left town, but there are signs of hope with some of the young players on the current roster. Bozak, Kessel and Kulemin are all under 24 years old and have been performing well of late - the highlight of Saturday's game was a nice breakaway goal by Bozak.
Leafs GM Brian Burke met with his team last week in Boston to remind his players that it's important they finish the season strong, even if the playoffs are out of reach. They've gone 4-1-1 since.
Notes: A group of Olympic gold medal winners were honoured before the game ... Garnet Exelby and Fredrik Sjostrom were scratched again for the Leafs ... Ladislav Smid, Patrick O'Sullivan, Ryan Jones and Fernando Pisani sat out for Edmonton ... The average age of the Leafs roster is 26.6 while the Oilers are 26.7 ... Toronto is 0-28-7 when trailing after two periods ... Announced attendance was 19,243.