EDMONTON \u2014 No first-round series in the Stanley Cup playoffs seemed more primed for chaos than the one between the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks, and Game 2 delivered as the Ducks scored two late goals to claim a 6-4 victory.<\/p>\n
Anaheim, after losing second-period leads of 3-1 and 4-2, has tied the series 1-1 as it heads to Honda Center for Game 3 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Ducks forward Cutter Gauthier beat Edmonton goalie Connor Ingram for the game-winner, Gauthier\u2019s second goal of the game, with 4:52 remaining in the third period. Ryan Poehling added a late empty-net goal. The Oilers had tied the game with 6:09 remaining on Josh Samanski\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stressful playing that way,\u201d Anaheim forward Alex Killorn said. \u201cI think we\u2019re getting used to it, but I think we\u2019d like to be a little bit better with the lead and hold on to some of those leads.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the resiliency in this group is pretty phenomenal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Special teams played a huge part, with Anaheim getting goals from Gauthier and Killorn on the power play and another from Poehling while killing a second-period penalty. The Oilers went scoreless on four power-play attempts and are 0-for-6 with the man advantage in the series.<\/p>\n
One bright spot for the Oilers: superstar Connor McDavid briefly left the game with an apparent injury to his right leg but returned late in the second period.<\/p>\n
Rough night for McDavid<\/p>\n
McDavid was held without a point for a second straight game to open these playoffs \u2014 something that only happened once during the regular season, in games on Jan. 20 vs. New Jersey and Jan. 22 vs. Pittsburgh. It also didn\u2019t happen at any point throughout last year\u2019s playoffs.<\/p>\n
Still, it was an eventful night for the Oilers captain. He spent a few minutes in the dressing room during the second period after getting his right leg and ankle tangled up awkwardly with teammate Mattias Ekholm before returning to the game. McDavid did not seem to be at 100 percent in the second half of the game \u2014 he could be seen wincing on the bench between shifts \u2014 and he turned the puck over in his own zone immediately before a short-handed goal by Poehling that gave Anaheim a 4-2 lead.<\/p>\n
Credit the Ducks for the work they\u2019ve done on No. 97 so far. The way they\u2019ve limited McDavid\u2019s free ice with aggressive stick checks is a major reason why he\u2019s had such a quiet start to the series.<\/p>\n
The Oilers won McDavid\u2019s five-on-five minutes, territorially speaking, in Game 2, holding a 16-10 edge in attempts, a 9-6 edge in shots and a 4-1 edge in high-danger chances, according to Natural Stat Trick. Keeping him off the scoresheet, though, was more than enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve switched their style a little bit, kind of sitting back a little bit, sitting in their 1-1-2 and making it tough,\u201d McDavid said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to be stubborn with it and keep putting it in and forecheck them and make them come the full way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall, the Ducks have allowed 34 and 37 shots against, respectively, in the series, which is up from their average of about 28. They\u2019re allowing the same number of all-situations expected goals against per 60 (3.49) as the regular season \u2014 which, given the Oilers\u2019 offensive reputation, represents a win.<\/p>\n
Gauthier comes up big<\/p>\n
Gauthier had a quiet Game 1. Too quiet for him. He had just one shot on goal and one other missed attempt. Perhaps as a result, Ducks coach Joel Quenneville only gave him a little more than 13 minutes of ice time.<\/p>\n
It was not the kind of game Anaheim has been accustomed to seeing from Gauthier, who led the Ducks with 41 goals along with 286 shots on 559 attempts. Gauthier called it a \u201clearning experience\u201d and put that lesson into practice for Game 2.<\/p>\n
Anaheim\u2019s move to replace Chris Kreider on the top line, and pair Gauthier with Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry, clearly worked. Gauthier scored early in the second period, with the help of an effective Beckett Sennecke screen. He also factored in the next goal, battling to keep possession inside the Edmonton zone on a power play and getting the puck down to Alex Killorn. Killorn finished on a second chance at the net for a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Then, after the Oilers tied the game 4-4 in the third period, Gauthier gave them the lead again with 4:52 remaining with a finish as the Ducks created enough chaos in front of Ingram to create the extra chance.<\/p>\n
Draisaitl follows with another big game<\/p>\n
Leon Draisaitl wasn\u2019t ineffective on Monday night \u2014 he certainly wasn\u2019t skating like a guy who\u2019d missed more than a month of games because of a lower-body injury \u2014 but from a timing standpoint, he wasn\u2019t quite himself, either. The expectation was that he\u2019d knock off that rust in a hurry, and that\u2019s exactly what was seen in Game 2. Draisaitl, after taking a pass along the goal line on a slick net-front look by Vasily Podkolzin, banked a shot off Ducks defenseman Drew Helleson for Edmonton\u2019s first goal 8:58 into the game.<\/p>\n
Then, in the second period, with the Ducks up 3-1, Draisaitl absorbed contact from Killorn, circled back on Jacob Trouba to create space and fired a pinpoint backhand pass to teammate Connor Murphy in the high slot. Murphy buried it for his first career playoff goal. Plenty of Oilers had rough evenings, but Draisaitl was not among them. He\u2019s up to four points in the series, and he, Podkolzin and Kasperi Kapanen have been Edmonton\u2019s only consistently effective line.<\/p>\n
Special-teams surprises<\/p>\n
Heading into the series, the Oilers were thought to have a major advantage in special-teams play. Not only did Edmonton\u2019s power play click at 30.6 percent to lead the NHL, its penalty kill was better than Anaheim\u2019s, even if a 77.8 percent success rate for 20th place wasn\u2019t exactly airtight.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Ducks are flourishing in both aspects over the first two games. After Anaheim got a Troy Terry goal in two power-play chances in Game 1, Gauthier and Killorn delivered on the power play in Game 2.<\/p>\n
More shocking is how effective the Ducks have been in killing their penalties. They were disciplined in only allowing Edmonton two power-play chances in Game 1. But even with more trips to the penalty box in Game 2, Anaheim not only frustrated the Oilers but put something on the scoreboard short-handed, with Poehling redirecting Killorn\u2019s shot-pass after McDavid threw a puck into an area with no teammates around.<\/p>\n
During the season, Anaheim was 23rd on the power play (18.6 percent) and 27th on the penalty kill (76.4 percent). Both were disappointing figures considering the talent in their available units at each discipline. They\u2019ve become a strength at the right time.<\/p>\n
Anaheim\u2019s penalty kill \u201cdid a hell of a job,\u201d goalie Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l\u2019said. \u201cI feel like (the Oilers) had a hard time to enter the zone, and that was something that we really tried to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samanski surprise<\/p>\n
Not only did Josh Samanski draw into his first career Stanley Cup playoff game, replacing the injured Adam Henrique on Edmonton\u2019s fourth line, he scored the first goal of his NHL career in which he actually shot the puck past a goaltender.<\/p>\n
Samanski finished off a nice Matt Savoie pass to tie the game 4-4 at 13:51 of the third period, sending the Oilers bench and Rogers Place crowd into a wild celebration. The 24-year-old German did score twice in the 24 NHL games he played during his rookie season, but both were the result of opponents accidentally shooting the puck into their own goal.<\/p>\n
Samanski has earned coach Kris Knoblauch\u2019s trust through his defensive reliability \u2014 \u201cNothing bad seems to happen when he\u2019s on the ice,\u201d McDavid said before Game 2. \u201cThat\u2019s a great way to get into the league\u201d \u2014 but he made no mistake when Savoie found him for an open look in the slot. Samanski stepped into a shot that flew over Dost\u00e1l\u2019s left shoulder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 No first-round series in the Stanley Cup playoffs seemed more primed for chaos than the one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,2070,404],"class_list":["post-281725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281725","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=281725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}