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Oilers captain Connor McDavid continues to fight the puck, and Edmonton’s vaunted power play has yet to strike to start the NHL playoffs.<\/p>\n
McDavid, the league’s regular-season points leader, was held off the scoresheet a second straight game Wednesday at Rogers Place. He had four shots and went minus-2 in a 6-4 loss to the Anaheim Ducks.<\/p>\n
He weathered an injury scare early in the second period to continue playing, but his giveaway later that period led to Anaheim’s short-handed goal and a 4-2 lead.<\/p>\n
Edmonton takes a 1-1 split to Anaheim after a 4-3 win in Game 1 in the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n
The Ducks host the Oilers on Friday in the first playoff game at the Honda Center since 2018. Game 4 is Sunday.<\/p>\n
McDavid raced the puck into the offensive zone only to turn it over or be stripped of it several times in the first two games of the series.<\/p>\n
“He’s putting a lot of pressure on himself,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch.<\/p>\n
“He wants the team to do well. He’s a leader and usually when we have success, he’s a big part of that. There’ve been stretches during the season that he hasn’t been the best player, nights where he hasn’t been outstanding.<\/p>\n
“That doesn’t happen very often, and I’m certain that he’s going to find his game.”<\/p>\n
McDavid’s lower right leg appeared to buckle when he collided early in the second period with teammate Mattias Ekholm, who was attempting to check Anaheim’s Ian Moore.<\/p>\n
He finished his shift in discomfort before heading to the bench and down the tunnel. The centre returned to test his ankle and resume play in the second period.<\/p>\n
“I just rolled up on it a little bit. It’s fine,” McDavid said after the game.<\/p>\n
His backhand toward the blue line was picked off by Anaheim’s Alex Killorn, who dished to Ryan Poehling for a redirect and a short-handed goal at 15:50 of the second period.<\/p>\n
“Just a little bit of a miscommunication,” McDavid said.<\/p>\n
When Edmonton’s Zach Hyman redirected an Ekholm blast to score less than two minutes later and pull the hosts within a goal, McDavid \u2014 standing almost beside Hyman \u2014 lifted his right foot protectively.<\/p>\n
But the captain walked into the Oilers dressing room in his bare feet and spoke to the media after the game.<\/p>\n
“It’s the playoffs and we’ve got to start going,” he said.<\/p>\n
Hand in hand with McDavid’s struggles was Edmonton’s power play that failed to convert four chances and went 0-for-6 to start the series.<\/p>\n
The Oilers’ power play was a league-leading 30.6 per cent successful in the regular season.<\/p>\n
The Ducks were winning the special teams battle with a 3-for-5 power play over the first two games, plus Wednesday’s short-handed goal.<\/p>\n
The Oilers were minus penalty killers Adam Henrique and Jason Dickinson on Wednesday with undisclosed injuries.<\/p>\n
Knoblauch said Thursday that Henrique would not be making the trip to Anaheim, but Dickinson, who scored twice in Game 1, could be back in the lineup for Game 3.<\/p>\n
Edmonton’s power play generated cleaner entries Wednesday than in Game 1, but still wasn’t able to cash in a goal.<\/p>\n
“I still thought we got looks. I still thought we had chances,” McDavid said. “We’ve got to find a way to score. Can’t give up a shorty either. It’ll come.”<\/p>\n
He pointed out that power-play linemate Leon Draisaitl missed the last 14 games, and Hyman sat out the last five games of the regular season with injuries.<\/p>\n
“As good as the power play is, it’s still a work in progress,” McDavid said. “We haven’t ran our normal routes and had our normal looks for some time. It’s not just a light switch, so we’re working at it.”<\/p>\n
The Oilers reached the Stanley Cup final each of the last two years. Edmonton lost in Game 6 to the Florida Panthers last year and in Game 7 to the Panthers in 2024.<\/p>\n
McDavid and Draisaitl co-led the playoffs in points in 2025 with 33 points in 22 games each.<\/p>\n
Edmonton needs McDavid to find his scoring touch again to produce another long post-season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-282786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282786","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=282786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}