EDMONTON \u2014 Connor McDavid did not take the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 morning skate and will be a game-time decision for Game 5 against the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday night, coach Kris Knoblauch said. The Oilers, down 3-1 in the series and one loss away from a first-round elimination, are also turning back to goaltender Connor Ingram, who backed up Tristan Jarry in Edmonton\u2019s 5-4 overtime loss in Game 4.<\/p>\n
McDavid appeared to injure his ankle in Edmonton\u2019s Game 2 loss after getting tied up with teammate Mattias Ekholm. The Ducks have since beaten Edmonton in three straight, and while McDavid has produced points, he\u2019s clearly not 100 percent. He took what Knoblauch called a \u201cmaintenance day\u201d on Saturday in Anaheim ahead of Game 4.<\/p>\n
Asked about the state of his health on Sunday, McDavid responded by saying the Oilers \u201cfeel we\u2019re all doing the best we can out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Third-line center Jason Dickinson will also be a game-time decision, Knoblauch said. Dickinson, who injured his ankle blocking a shot late in the regular season, also missed Games 2 and 3.<\/p>\n
After tightening up for the last 10 games of the regular season, the Oilers are having across-the-board defensive struggles against the Ducks. Anaheim has outscored the Oilers 17-11 over the last three games, outshot them 105-89 and scored six power-play goals. Edmonton has blown two-goal leads in consecutive games.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, injuries are affecting how we\u2019re playing. Obviously, there\u2019s some, but there\u2019s a lot of teams that have injuries and they still continue to play well. I see some of the things that we\u2019re doing right now weren\u2019t the things that we were doing at the end of the season,\u201d Knoblauch said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve seen the best out of our group even though there\u2019s some circumstances and some guys that are not 100 percent, but I still think we got a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leon Draisaitl, who missed the last month of the regular season, will be in the lineup. He, like McDavid, took a maintenance day Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every team has things that they have to battle through,\u201d Draisaitl said. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s not ideal right now at the moment, but we gotta find a way to grind through it, and we gotta find a way to stick to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ingram, meanwhile, had been benched in favor of Jarry for Game 4 after allowing six goals on 38 shots in a 7-4 Game 3 loss. In the first three games combined, Ingram stopped 79 of 93 shots, a step backward after seizing the starting job down the stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought (Jarry) had a solid game the other night, but going down these last few weeks or months, Ingram\u2019s been our starter. He\u2019s been our guy,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cNow that our season\u2019s on the line, we felt that we would go with our guy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 Connor McDavid did not take the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 morning skate and will be a game-time decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,2070,404],"class_list":["post-290129","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\/290129","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=290129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}