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<\/p>\nMcDavid finished the game and said afterward he\u2019d \u201crolled up on it a little bit.\u201d The captain was held off the scoresheet in the first two games of the series in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
Knoblauch said third-line centre Jason Dickinson, who didn\u2019t skate Friday morning, was a game-time decision.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Dickinson from Georgetown, Ont., scored twice in Edmonton\u2019s 4-3 win in Game 1, but grimaced in pain after he went down following a faceoff. He didn\u2019t play in Game 2.<\/p>\n
Fourth-line centre and penalty-kill specialist Adam Henrique didn\u2019t travel with the team to Anaheim. <\/p>\n
He was injured in the first period of Game 1 when he collided with teammate Kasperi Kapanen.<\/p>\n
Josh Samanski, who scored his first NHL playoff goal, and Curtiz Lazar drew into Game 2 for the injured forwards. Both skated Friday morning.<\/p>\n
\u2014-<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Oilers were set to play their first playoff game at the Honda Center in nine years in Friday\u2019s Game 3 of their first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks<\/p>\n
Current Oilers forwards Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and defenceman Darnell Nurse were members of the 2017 edition that lost 2-1 to the Ducks in Game 7 on May 10 and were eliminated in the second round.<\/p>\n
The four men, all under the age of 23 then, made their NHL playoff debuts that year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I remember most was losing, unfortunately, but it was intense, it was a great atmosphere,\u201d Nugent-Hopkins said Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey had some really high-end players that were big guys that really made you pay. We had a hard-fought battle against that team that year, and unfortunately didn\u2019t find ourselves on the winning end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
No Ducks remain from their 2017 roster that reached the Western Conference final before falling to the Nashville Predators in six games.<\/p>\n
Anaheim was set to host its first playoff game Friday since April 14, 2018. The Ducks were swept in the first round by the San Jose Sharks that year despite having home-ice advantage, and missed the post-season the next seven years.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
The start of the Oilers-Ducks series was called tame in part because of a combined 22 penalty minutes \u2014 the Oilers 10 and the Ducks 12 \u2014 over the first two games.<\/p>\n
The next closest teams, the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth, had 22 penalty minutes apiece over the first two games of that series.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur messaging is let\u2019s play hard during the whistles,\u201d Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t take penalties. Took four last game and maybe all of them could have been prevented, and that\u2019s too many.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch: \u201cI know a lot of the teams, it\u2019s part of their identity to really muck it up and probably more of getting the other team distracted. This series has been more of \u2018let\u2019s play our game\u2019 and I don\u2019t think any team feels like they\u2019re a heavy underdog that they have to disrupt the other teams\u2019 rhythm and flow.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McDavid finished the game and said afterward he\u2019d \u201crolled up on it a little bit.\u201d The captain was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[879,49,48,2467,23752,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,2465,2466,82],"class_list":["post-626468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-central-vancouver-island","tag-edmonton","tag-nanaimo","tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","tag-nanaimo-news","tag-nanaimo-news-now","tag-nanaimonewsnow","tag-news","tag-oceanside","tag-parksville","tag-qualicum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626468","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=626468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}