DUCKS PROVE TO BE MIGHTY
A dejected-looking Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers bench wait out the final seconds of Sunday night’s third game of the second-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Anaheim Ducks at Rogers Place. The Oilers lost 6-3 but take a 2-1 series lea
There will be a Game 5...at least.
With the Oilers up 2-0 coming home and fans in Edmonton daring to dream that their team might sweep its way into the Western Conference final, the Anaheim Ducks sent a loud and clear message Sunday: This series is a long way from over.
The Ducks took a hostile crowd out of the game early and took the Oilers out of it late by scoring three goals in the first period and three goals down the stretch en route to a convincing 6-3 Game 3 victory at Rogers Place.
Edmonton will put the last of its breathing room on the line in Game 4 Wednesday.
“We weren’t very good, they got the win,” said head coach Todd McLellan, describing the night perfectly. “That’s a team that hasn’t lost three games in a row in I don’t know how many games. So for us to think it was going to be a 4-0 easy cakewalk … it wasn’t.
“We’re now experiencing what it’s like to play against a very desperate, hard, hungry team.”
The Ducks knew coming in the difference between 3-0 and 2-1 in a playoff series is between massive and astronomical, resulting in a level of desperation that proved too much for the Oilers to handle.
Edmonton rose up in the second period to erase a three-goal deficit, but the first and third were all Ducks.
“We worked our way back in, but it wasn’t our night,” said McLellan.
The expectation for Game 3 was an earth-shaking atmosphere that would let the Ducks know before the puck even dropped if they wanted this one, they would have to get through some of the most passionate fans in sports. Then the puck dropped. And the bottom fell out of the game like garbage through a wet paper bag.
Just 25 seconds in, it was 1-0 Ducks. At 5:33, it was 2-0. And at 11:51, Anaheim had a 3-0 lead.
Just like that. Rickard Rakell, Jacob Silfverberg and Ryan Getzlaf were all on the board.
“It was a bad start, we weren’t ready to play,” said Jordan Eberle. “We found ourselves down by three.” Game over, right? Not quite. The Oilers weren’t done yet. Patrick Maroon and Anton Slepyshev scored goals 2:08 apart late in the first and early in the second and Connor McDavid brought down the house with the goal of the playoffs, dekeing Sami Vatanen into the middle of next week and putting the tying goal under the crossbar past Ducks’ goalie John Gibsona at 8:40.
“I think our second period was the best period out of the nine periods we’ve played,” said Maroon.
The Oilers were about to ride their momentum to victory, right? Not quite.
Just 48 seconds after McDavid’s highlight of the night, Chris Wagner snuck one through Cam Talbot and the building fell silent again.
“I didn’t make the save early that I needed to and I didn’t make a lot of other saves during the game that I needed to,” said Talbot, who didn’t like the Wagner goal at all. “It was kind of a knuckle puck from the corner, it kind of changed speed on me, but that was a deciding moment in the game. We have all the momentum, we just tied the game, and a shot like that goes in. It can’t go in. It’s on me.”
It was on all of them, actually, allowing the Ducks to pull away in the third on Silfverberg’s second of the night, which stood after an offside video review that looked either offside or too close to call, and one more from Ryan Kesler. Now the Oilers were done. “We did a good job battling back to tie it up, but ultimately, we definitely didn’t deserve to win this one,” said McDavid.
The fifth Anaheim goal was very likely offside, but the league said it couldn’t find the definitive shot on video, so the goal had to stand.
“Your eyes are telling you it’s offside,” said McLellan. “But if you’re the linesman, you’re saying ‘I don’t know for sure,’ so the call on the ice stands.
“It’s disappointing because even they likely know it’s offside but they can’t confirm it.
“But let’s not kid ourselves, that wasn’t the back breaker. The back breaker was about 25 seconds in.”