Oilers, Ducks have real substance
Anaheim’s Carlyle knows Edmonton is a legitimate threat.
In this world of short attention spans and quick hits, it would be easy to sum up the Ducks’ second-round playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers as the meeting between a hotheaded team with a recent history of playoff underachievement and a brash, young group whose postseason joyride is being steered by the incandescent talent of NHL scoring champion Connor McDavid.
It would be easy, but it also would shortchange both teams.
Leave it to Ducks coach
Randy Carlyle to slash through a thicket of cliches and take a practical view of his team’s opponent in this best-of-seven Stanley Cup playoff series, which will start Wednesday at Honda Center. To Carlyle, the Oilers’ image as a bunch of kids playing shinny isn’t accurate because it doesn’t reflect the strengths of a team that will present the Ducks a much bigger challenge than they faced in their first-round sweep of the Calgary Flames.
“Edmonton’s earned their right to be here. And they’ve done a lot of things that give them a feel-good story about their season, their team, they’re growing,” Carlyle said Tuesday after the Ducks’ final preseries practice. “I don’t look at them as a young team. I think they portray that, that they’re so young, and they’re so this, they’re so that. I think that’s a pile of crap because they’re not young.
“They have some very good young players, one specifically in McDavid, that stands out, the young defenseman in [Darnell] Nurse, who stands out, dynamic young players, [Drake] Caggiula, another young player, but after that they’ve got a veteran lineup and they’ve got a lot of talent and a lot of high draft choices that have been moved to different spots in their lineup and have solidified them as a group.”
Blunt, and true. But it’s also true that the Ducks are no longer the undisciplined, unmotivated group they’ve long been portrayed as, a label they sometimes deserved.
Center Ryan Getzlaf, continuing his late-season surge, is actually shooting the puck more than once in a while, fulfilling the wishes of every coach he has played for since he was 12 and first displayed his fine wrist shot. As a team the Ducks have largely avoided needless post-whistle penalties, and with a calmer Carlyle using his bench-management skills they had the assets and the poise to regroup while facing the kind of adversity that tripped them up in their last playoff experiences.
Trailing, 4-1, in Game 3 at Calgary after goaltender John Gibson gave up too many juicy rebounds and their penalty killing failed them, the Ducks rallied for a statement win in a 5-4 overtime victory. Unable to use injured defenseman Cam Fowler for the whole series, Sami Vatanen for three games and Hampus Lindholm for part of Game 4, they rode the young legs of Brandon Montour and Shea Theodore to a quick closeout that gave their injured players a week to rest. “We weren’t our best at times, at periods in the games and moments in the game,” center Nate Thompson said, “but I think that we stuck together and we stuck to the game plan and found ways to win, and that’s a positive.”
Fowler, who said he’s ready to play against Edmonton if he gets medical clearance, was impressed with his teammates’ efforts against Calgary.
“I saw that we were able to win games in different ways, whether it’s clamping down defensively, goaltending, special teams. We kind of went through a cycle of ways to win in that first round, which is great,” Fowler said. “I think if you were to ask anybody, I don’t think anyone felt that we played our 100% game, the way that we want to dictate things, and we were still able to close it out in four. So that gives us some encouragement going forward.”
The Pacific Division champion Ducks were fortunate to draw the Flames — the first wild-card team — in the first round. The other wild card berth went to the Nashville Predators, who would have been a bad matchup for the Ducks. Nashville, which eliminated the Ducks last season, shocked the hockey world last week by sweeping the Chicago Blackhawks. The Flames are a few pieces away from being a Cup contender and they’ve lost 29 straight games at Honda Center since 2006. Nothing is easy this time of year, but facing Nashville would have been much harder for the Ducks.
The Oilers, who are making their first playoff appearance since 2006 — when McDavid was 9 years old — aren’t an easy matchup for anyone. They added size to complement their speed and used both elements well in a six-game elimination of the San Jose Sharks in the first round. “The further you go, the tougher it gets,” Fowler said.
How tough will it be? Finding out will be the fun part. “It’s a good hockey club,” Thompson said. “Well-coached, and they have a little bit of everything. I think it’s going to be a good challenge for us.”