The Day After 54.0: Oilers handle Ducks in first meeting against potential playoff opponent<\/p>\n
If the NHL season were to end today, Monday night\u2019s matchup between the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks would have been a first-round preview.<\/p>\n
Of course, much can and surely will change between late January and the start of the playoffs in April, but for now, the Oilers sit second in the Pacific Division while the Ducks occupy third.<\/p>\n
Anaheim arrived in Edmonton riding a seven-game winning streak that came on the heels of a nine-game skid. It\u2019s been a rollercoaster season, but the young Ducks appear poised to end a seven-year playoff drought, the longest in franchise history by a wide margin.<\/p>\n
Riding high off an overtime win in Calgary on Sunday, Anaheim opened the scoring just three minutes into the first period when Mikael Granlund roofed a shot over Tristan Jarry. Zach Hyman answered late in the frame with another power-play goal to send the game into the intermission tied 1-1.<\/p>\n
The floodgates opened in the second period, led once again by offence from Edmonton\u2019s blueline<\/a>. After Alex Killorn put the Ducks ahead just one minute in, the home side stormed back with four goals in under four minutes, all from defencemen. Spencer Stastney scored his first goal as an Oiler, Mattias Ekholm followed two minutes later, Darnell Nurse added an unassisted marker, and Ekholm struck again to cap the burst.<\/p>\n Granlund scored two more power-play goals, one later in the second and another in the third, to pull Anaheim within one at 5-4. The Oilers pulled away when Connor McDavid scored into the empty net, and with 11 seconds remaining, Ekholm buried another to complete the first hat trick of his NHL career.<\/p>\n Beyond Ekholm, Leon Draisaitl led the way offensively for the Oilers, racking up four assists on the team\u2019s seven goals. Both Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman scored a goal and an assist, while Tristan Jarry turned aside 36 of 40 shots from a high-energy Ducks squad for the win. Ville Husso had a forgettable night between the pipes for Anaheim, allowing five goals on 30 shots from Edmonton.<\/p>\n If Monday\u2019s game was any indication, a first-round series between Edmonton and Anaheim would be a welcome change from the annual grind-fest against the Los Angeles Kings that Oilers fans have grown accustomed to each spring.<\/p>\n What they said\u2026<\/p>\n Mattias Ekholm on scoring his first NHL hat trick in Edmonton\u2019s win over the Ducks\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cFun moment. I mean, that last face-off, too, we\u2019re up by two. If we were up by one, I\u2019d probably just try to chip it out. But yeah, I tried to take a look at it at least, see what happens. But fortunate enough to get it in there. So yeah, cool moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m usually not known for my goal-scoring ability. I couldn\u2019t buy a goal for 20 games. So, that tells you the story.\u201d<\/p>\n Head coach Kris Knoblauch on Ekholm following up Evan Bouchard\u2019s historic performance\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPretty remarkable tonight with what happened with the back-to-back hat tricks. And Mattias playing as many games as he has and finally getting his first, he told me he was close to getting a hat trick a long time ago and had an opportunity on an empty net and missed the net.<\/p>\n \u201cBut tonight, he wasn\u2019t missing that. That was right down the middle. It\u2019s good. The odds of him scoring a hat trick tonight were probably pretty low, and it\u2019s pretty exciting. He\u2019s been playing really good hockey, and the fact that he got three tonight, everyone\u2019s really happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Leon Draisaitl on Edmonton\u2019s defence scoring five goals\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI thought they were great, breaking the puck out for the most part, and obviously joining the rush and creating offence for us. You need that. You need every part of the game to contribute, and the last couple of games, they\u2019ve obviously been key.\u201d<\/p>\n Draisaitl on Anaheim\u2019s breakout season\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of fresh legs and a lot of enthusiasm. Lots of skill, so a team that has a bright future, for sure. They\u2019ve certainly taken some steps.\u201d<\/p>\n Ducks forward Mikael Granlund on the team\u2019s loss in Edmonton\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI think we were doing a lot of good things out there, playing the right way. Everyone was doing what we can in our systems, and I think we\u2019ve been doing a really good job for seven or eight games.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we didn\u2019t rewarded tonight, but it\u2019s not an easy game playing back-to-back and coming into this building.\u201d<\/p>\n Up next\u2026Edmonton\u2019s eight-game homestand<\/a> continues on Thursday when the Oilers go up against the San Jose Sharks for the first time this season. This is another potential first-round preview in the Pacific Division<\/a>, as the Sharks sit four points back of the Ducks in the standings with three games in hand on Anaheim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Day After 54.0: Oilers handle Ducks in first meeting against potential playoff opponent If the NHL season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-152087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}