When the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks open their first-round NHL playoff series Monday, it will be a complete reversal from 2017, the last time the teams met in the playoffs.
Back then, the Ducks used their veteran lineup to subdue the young, mostly inexperienced Oilers 4-3 in a second-round series. Now the roles are flipped with a veteran, playoff-hardened Edmonton team facing a young, run-and-gun Ducks squad.
Now, the Ducks’ top four scorers — forwards Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson and Beckett Sennecke, and defenceman Jackson LaCombe — average 21 years old.
“They have a lot of young talent over there that has led the way through the regular season, so it will be a focus of ours to be hard on them, not give them anything easy,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said of the Ducks.
“We know in general they want to play a fast game, play on the run and on the go,” he said after Friday’s practice, which saw backup goaltender Cal Picard return. “That’s not how we want to play. We want to play tight defensively and make things really difficult for them and wait for our chances.”
The Oilers finished second in the Pacific Division, two points back of Vegas after a 6-2-2 run to close the regular season. The Ducks were third but went 2-6-2 over their final 10 games.
The Oilers, Stanley Cup finalists the last two years, head into the series feeling confident after having found their defensive game in the last few weeks of the regular season.
“The push we had the last month or so, we’ve played a lot better,” veteran defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “We had some big guys go down, and guys come in and fill those spots. The guys in here feel as good as they have all year, going into the playoffs, which absolutely can help our group.”
What could also help the Oilers would be the return of forward Leon Draisaitl. He’s been out since March 15, but for the past several days has been skating with the team and spending upwards of 90 minutes on the ice.
“He looks good on the ice,” head coach Kris Knoblauch said of Draisaitl. “He’s pushing himself in the gym and on the ice.”
Still, Knoblauch was not prepared to commit to whether the big German forward would be ready for Monday night’s series opener. Whenever he does return, it will give the Oilers two high-powered offensive lines and two solid defensive units that have also been contributing to scoring recently.
Their much-improved defensive play in the final weeks of the season has the Oilers confident they’ll find ways to handle the spirited Ducks.
“They’ve got some really high-end skill up front,” Ekholm said of the Ducks. “On the back end, they’ve got great goaltending; they’ll be a tough opponent for sure. But we’re starting at home, and hopefully we can take advantage of that. It’s going to be hard all the way through.”
Expectations are high in Edmonton, with players confident they can compete with anybody. But as Knoblauch cautioned, a lot has to go right — solid goaltending, good health, continued defensive play — and even then, winning often comes down to the right bounces.
“We have a lot of belief in here,” captain Connor McDavid, the NHL scoring leader for a sixth time, said. “It takes skill to win in the playoffs, and we feel pretty good about having that skill, having been there and won a lot of playoff games.”
Regular-season series: 2-1 in Edmonton’s favour.
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