{"id":611691,"date":"2026-04-18T04:45:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T04:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611691\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T04:45:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T04:45:32","slug":"oilers-get-blast-from-past-in-first-round-series-against-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/611691\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers get blast from past in first-round series against Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0\u201cWe have this little red box of things. Uh\u2026 It\u2019s going to sound corny\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd McLellan was taking his 2016-17 Edmonton Oilers<\/a> into the playoffs for the first time after 10 long years of missing the big dance.<\/p>\n

The Decade of Darkness was over in Edmonton. Connor McDavid<\/a> had arrived, with his first 100-point season. There was this big German kid who\u2019d scored 29 goals. Might turn into a player.<\/p>\n

After six years in the NHL, Jordan Eberle would get his first taste of playoff hockey. Milan Lucic, Pat Maroon and Zack Kassian were timing out their circles during warmups, each skating a few feet into the opponent\u2019s zone \u2014\u00a0one after another, after another \u2014\u00a0an intimidation routine that set the table for mayhem. Or, at least, the prospect of it.<\/p>\n

But McLellan had cut his coaching teeth in Detroit. He knew that the Anaheim Ducks in Round 2 were an entirely different animal than the San Jose Sharks team that Edmonton had defeated in Round 1.<\/p>\n

So he went to his \u201clittle red box,\u201d sketched on the white board in the Oilers dressing room. And it included exactly what\u2026?<\/p>\n

\u201c(Things that) make a difference in winning and losing,\u201d he explained that spring. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the reverse on the breakout; it\u2019s not about the faceoff play that you run in the offensive zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about game management. It\u2019s about shift management. It\u2019s about momentum, discipline, commitment level\u2026 All those catch-words that coaches use to fill those boxes. And there aren\u2019t very many analytic guys out there that can chart them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A near-decade later, it\u2019s the Anaheim Ducks who are on Year 8 of a rebuild and making their first playoff appearance, finally.<\/p>\n

The season after they defeated the Oilers in seven games in that 2017 series, the Ducks had 101 points, made the playoffs and lost in Round 1. They haven\u2019t returned since.<\/p>\n

Now, finally, they\u2019re back in and matched up against an Oilers team that has won six rounds in the past two seasons. It\u2019s a veteran-laden, experienced Oilers roster that \u2014\u00a0just like those 2017 Ducks \u2014\u00a0has forgotten more playoff lessons than the young Ducks have learned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’ll be a focus of us to be hard on them, not give them anything easy,\u201d explained 1,000-game veteran Ryan Nugent-Hopkins<\/a>, who broke his own playoff maiden back in \u201917. \u201cWe know, in general, they just they want to play a fast game. They want to play (run-\u2018n-gun hockey), and that’s not how we want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nugent-Hopkins, 33 and now with two children, remembers looking at that Anaheim roster, with names like Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Kesler and John Gibson. Some of them had won a Cup in 2007. They were accomplished playoff vets.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got to be exactly what today\u2019s Ducks see when they peruse Edmonton\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously you know who’s on the other side, and how experienced there they are,\u201d Nugent-Hopkins recalled. \u201cWe had a lot of young guys leading the way, and we just played fast and worried about our own game. We also had some big boys who would run around. It was a good first experience, but we’ve come a long way since then, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Ducks team has made a season out of falling behind, then storming back in the third period to grab wins. They\u2019ve been must-watch, not unlike those emerging Oilers were.<\/p>\n

But comebacks are hard to find against experienced, playoff-hardened opponents like Edmonton. In the last five years, the Oilers\u2019 79 playoff games are second in the NHL only to Florida (84).<\/p>\n

If you fall behind this team every day, you\u2019re unlikely to come back more than once in a series. Then, you\u2019re not known as the sexy comeback team \u2014 you\u2019re just the team that kept falling behind all series.<\/p>\n

The Oilers, as contenders tend to do, have steeled their game since the Olympic break.<\/p>\n

Connor Ingram is giving them above-average goaltending. Connor Murphy and Darnell Nurse have formed a formidable shutdown pair, two surly six-foot-four shot-blockers and play stoppers who allow the top pair of Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard the freedom to furnish the star forwards with the kinds of pucks that breed offence.<\/p>\n

Since March 15, Edmonton is a top-five defensive team in the NHL, allowing 2.47 goals per game. That\u2019s more than a goal ahead of 25th-ranked Anaheim (3.63), as the Ducks have found the art of scoring their way out of their troubles an elusive trait as February turned to March and April.<\/p>\n

So Round 1 turns out to be a matchup of the 2026 Oilers versus their younger selves. A firewagon group that has learned the hard way that defence is important against a run-\u2018n-gun Ducks outfit that is strutting into class for the first time, with a shiny new lunch kit and a fresh haircut.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayoff hockey is always tight. We\u2019re comfortable in those games,\u201d promised Connor McDavid. \u201cThey\u2019re a very skilled young team that plays with a lot of energy and creates a lot. We\u2019re going to have our hands full and it\u2019s our job to slow them down a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDavid would never say the important part out loud, of course.<\/p>\n

The part about how it\u2019s an entirely different game that the Ducks are about to experience. About how, after a decade of playoff hockey, it turns out that the game that wins here isn\u2019t much like the game that got you here at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a young team. It\u2019s their first time in the playoffs and they\u2019ll be excited as they should be,\u201d McDavid said. \u201cThey\u2019ve earned their spot and they\u2019ll be excited.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re excited too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0\u201cWe have this little red box of things. Uh\u2026 It\u2019s going to sound corny\u2026\u201d Todd McLellan was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-611691","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\/611691","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=611691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}