Zach Hyman<\/a> provided the empty net goal, giving the Oilers a 4-2 win and just their second three-game winning streak all season long \u2014\u00a0 a metaphor for the kind of year it\u2019s been in Edmonton.<\/p>\nWhen you can\u2019t win three straight, failing to extend a two-game streak 11 times in 13 attempts this season, it means you\u2019re having trouble putting a solid week of hockey together. In a season that started waaaay back in October, that\u2019s a lot of weeks, you might say.<\/p>\n
What you can\u2019t say, however, is that Edmonton isn\u2019t playing its best hockey of the season at the most crucial moment, closing to within three points of the first-place Ducks with eight games left in Edmonton\u2019s schedule. The Ducks have nine games to play, but a slightly tougher collection of opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe divisional points that were on the line, that was more important than giving up a three-goal lead,\u201d Dickinson said. \u201cForget that and win the game however you have to. Get it done because those two points make a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good night,\u201d echoed defenceman Darnell Nurse, whose game is really starting to arrive since being paired with big Connor Murphy. \u201cWhen we had to lock it down, we locked it down. (Connor Ingram) made some good saves, we locked it down defensively, our structure was good.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hockey, sometimes they\u2019re going to score goals too.\u201d<\/p>\n
This one entered the third period as a 1-0 Oilers lead, with a building full of savvy hockey people who knew the Ducks would make their inevitable push. But before that push started, Jack Roslovic and Matt Savoie \u2014\u00a0who scored for the third straight game \u2014\u00a0gave Edmonton a 3-0 cushion.<\/p>\n
One that, as it turned out, they would need.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first 50 minutes, it was as good as we’ve played all season,\u201d said head coach Kris Knoblauch. \u201cNothing too fancy \u2014\u00a0maybe we’d like to have gotten a goal on the power play, if I\u2019m being a bit negative. But five-on-five and on the penalty-kill we were really good, until we scored the third goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly, first place in the Pacific isn\u2019t the nonstarter it had been up until about a week ago. The reward for first place is a wild-card opponent (likely Utah), rather than facing a Divisional foe like Vegas or Los Angeles in Round 1.<\/p>\n
With three points to make up on the Ducks, Edmonton gets Seattle on Tuesday, Chicago Thursday and the final game of the regular season against Vegas on Saturday \u2014\u00a0all at Rogers Place. Anaheim\u2019s week goes like this: At home to Toronto Monday, in San Jose Wednesday, and home games against St. Louis and Calgary Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been chipping away at it,\u201d Nurse said of Edmonton\u2019s overall game. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t been perfect \u2014\u00a0we still have a lot of work to do. The race is still tight, there\u2019s nothing guaranteed. So for us, it\u2019s not about just putting a few games together, we\u2019ve got to continue this through the final (eight). It\u2019s the time of year we like to play in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmonton has travelled this road often over the last five seasons. Anaheim, meanwhile, hasn\u2019t been in a meaningful stretch run in eight years.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll get a look now at how the Ducks operate once they\u2019re hearing footsteps in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously Edmonton is a great team. They made it to the Stanley Cup Final the last two seasons,\u201d said the Ducks’ Cutter Gauthier. \u201cThey have a great team again this year. There\u2019s nine games left in this seasons and we have to focus on the small details that\u2019s going to help us be successful in the playoffs and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Get used to the matchup, folks.<\/p>\n
The Ducks are going to be around for a while, and the Oilers aren\u2019t going anywhere quite yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0No team comes back at you in the third period like the Anaheim Ducks. A franchise that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-567960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}