EDMONTON — Kris Knoblauch believes the Edmonton Oilers have the drive to mount a comeback against the Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference First Round.<\/p>\n
Trailing 3-1 in the best-of-7 series and facing elimination in Game 5 at Rogers Place on Tuesday (10 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, KCOP-13, TNT, truTV, Victory+, HBO MAX), the Oilers coach think there\u2019s still gas in the tank.<\/p>\n
Edmonton has played the most Stanley Cup Playoff games since 2022 (79), one more than the Florida Panthers, who did not qualify this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the energy level is there,\u201d Knoblauch said Monday, one day after a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 4 at Honda Center in Anaheim. \u201cI think we\u2019re ready. It has been a lot of hockey, but I don\u2019t think that should be warranted as an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ducks are playing their first playoff series since 2018; it\u2019s the first time here for 13 of their players.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Knoblauch admits he bears some of the responsibility of getting the Oilers to believe they can battle their way back in the series. But the game plan needs some tweaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of that is how we\u2019re approaching some of these games, how we\u2019re going to alter our game just a little bit, what adjustments are we making,\u201d he said. \u201cCredit to them — Anaheim this season has been a very hot-and-cold team and they\u2019re playing well. They\u2019re a very good team and if you look at the streaks they\u2019ve gone on, I believe they\u2019re playing very good hockey right now and we have to find a way how to break them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oilers forwards forwards Leon Draisaitl<\/a>, Zach Hyman<\/a> and Jason Dickinson<\/a> have just returned from injury, and Adam Henrique<\/a> (lower body) hasn\u2019t played since Game 1. Connor McDavid<\/a>, their captain, sustained an ankle injury in Game 2 that has appeared to limit his mobility and may change the way he is deployed the rest of the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n McDavid led the League this season with 138 points (48 goals, 90 assists) in 82 games.<\/p>\n \u201cI think maybe using him differently is maybe the matchups or the players that are playing with him,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cThose are some of the adjustments we have to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON — Kris Knoblauch believes the Edmonton Oilers have the drive to mount a comeback against the Anaheim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-634824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}