EDMONTON \u2014 The search required four games, three losses and one trip to the brink of elimination, but the Edmonton Oilers managed to track down their A-game and beat the Anaheim Ducks 4-1 on Tuesday night to trim Anaheim\u2019s series lead to 3-2.<\/p>\n
Game 6 is Thursday night in Anaheim.<\/p>\n
A three-goal first period, opened by Vasily Podkolzin 2:22 after puck drop, staked the Oilers out to an advantage they didn\u2019t waste. That represented a crucial shift from Game 4, a 4-3 Anaheim overtime win in which the Oilers gave up leads of 2-0 and 3-2.<\/p>\n
Edmonton\u2019s other first-period goals came from Zach Hyman and Leon Draisaitl, with the latter chasing Ducks goaltender Lukas Dost\u00e1l from the game after 10 minutes, 13 seconds, and nine shots faced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been in worse situations, certainly, but we also know the urgency that we need to bring and what\u2019s at stake,\u201d Drasaitl said after Edmonton\u2019s morning skate on Tuesday. \u201cThe group looks good to me and we\u2019re excited for tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Killorn got the Ducks on the board and pulled them within 3-1 with a power-play goal 8:26 into the second period, one-timing a feed from Mason McTavish past Edmonton goalie Connor Ingram. Less than two minutes later, Draisaitl responded with a power-play goal of his own, beating Ducks backup Ville Husso.<\/p>\n
Oilers captain Connor McDavid, who was a game-time decision due to an ankle injury, assisted on both Draisaitl\u2019s goals and played 24:09. That was a welcome development for the Oilers \u2014 nearly as much as the final score.<\/p>\n
Asked, on the Turner postgame show, how close he came to not playing, McDavid said: \u201cNever. Never close. We\u2019ve got a lot of guys that are digging in and giving everything they\u2019ve got, and no, that was never an option.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steady Ingram wins in return<\/p>\n
Ingram was shaky enough in the first three games, stopping just 79 of 93 shots, to lose the net to Tristan Jarry for Game 4. Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch went back to Ingram on Tuesday, though, and Ingram made that decision stand up.<\/p>\n
He finished with 29 saves on 30 shots and more closely resembled the even-keel, positionally sound goaltender who carried Edmonton down the stretch. Anaheim pushed hard at a few different points, including late in the first period and midway through the third, but Ingram stayed in control.<\/p>\n
One high point was his pad save on Ducks star Leo Carlsson streaking through the slot with 1:22 remaining in the first period. That helped send the Oilers to the locker room with a three-goal lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally big. Really big. (Ingram) was timely,\u201d McDavid said of the sequence. \u201cIt\u2019s not about saving the most, it\u2019s about saving the right ones, and that was the right one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rough, short night for Dost\u00e1l<\/p>\n
The eye-popping numbers Dost\u00e1l has put up in this high-scoring series are not positive. Dost\u00e1l came into Game 5 with an .878 save percentage, which ranked near the bottom among the 20 goalies in this postseason. And that number dropped further on a disastrous night for Anaheim\u2019s netminder.<\/p>\n
As has become commonplace, Dost\u00e1l was beaten early after Podkolzin beat him top shelf just 2:22 into the game. It quickly went from bad to worse for the goalie, who had been clutch in the third period of Game 4. Hyman and Draisaitl scored just 1:40 apart later in the first, and Dost\u00e1l was pulled after 10 minutes, 13 seconds. Three goals on nine shots now leaves him with an .864 save percentage in the five playoff games.<\/p>\n
Dost\u00e1l didn\u2019t help himself on the Oilers\u2019 second goal as he looked to play a puck off the side boards into space instead of rimming it hard off the glass. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins intercepted it inside the Anaheim zone and immediately fed the puck to the net. Podkolzin initially tried to get his stick on it but the puck got through to Hyman, who slipped it between Dost\u00e1l\u2019s pads.<\/p>\n
Podkolzin comes through again<\/p>\n
Oilers GM Stan Bowman deserves plenty of criticism for the roster he\u2019s built since taking the chair in the summer of 2024, but one of his first moves has paid off in a big way. On Aug. 18, he acquired Podkolzin from the Vancouver Canucks for a fourth-round draft pick. Podkolzin, the No. 10 pick in 2019, had stagnated with the Canucks and was about to become waiver-eligible, and Bowman pounced. By the 2025 postseason, Podkolzin was a key contributor<\/p>\n
This season, playing primarily on a line with Draisaitl, Podkolzin took another step, scoring 19 goals and adding skill and edge to the top six. He, Draisaitl and Kasperi Kapanen were Edmonton\u2019s most reliable forward grouping in the first three games, as well, so it wasn\u2019t much of a surprise to see Podkolzin (with Nugent-Hopkins as his center) open the scoring in Game 5.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old took a slick, in-stride feed from Evan Bouchard in the left circle and sniped one over Dost\u00e1l\u2019s shoulder, setting the tone for the period and the game. Podkolzin is signed for three more seasons at a $2.95 million cap hit. Edmonton could use a few more players like him \u2014 and they could use a few more contracts like his, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think (Podkolzin) ever takes a shift off,\u201d Bouchard said. \u201cHe\u2019s flying around out there. He does the little things right. And it\u2019s a big boost for our team, game after game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Draisaitl shifts momentum<\/p>\n
Draisaitl\u2019s second goal of the night restored some much-needed breathing room \u2014 a three-goal lead \u2014 amid a push by the Ducks in the second period and came as a result of the lumbering Oilers forward sticking with it from his office in the right faceoff circle.<\/p>\n
Fifteen seconds after Husso slid post-to-post to stuff Draisaitl on a one-time attempt, Draisaitl found a hole in the Ducks goaltender when McDavid sifted a pass onto his blade at 10:24 of the second period to make it 4-1. That was a momentum-shifting strike for an Oilers team that had seen Anaheim come from behind in the previous three games, and it was an example of Draisaitl putting his words into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just been like, minor, little mistakes,\u201d Draisaitl said before Game 5 of the Oilers struggles. \u201cLittle details that slip away for one second and they\u2019re capitalizing on it. They\u2019re doing a good job, they are dangerous. So we\u2019ve got to keep focused for 60 minutes and stick with it and at the same time we gotta push a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDavid picked up assists on both Draisaitl goals to push his career total to 25 points in games in which the Oilers are facing elimination \u2014 matching Patrick Kane for the most in NHL history by a player whose team can be eliminated.<\/p>\n
One clear positive for Ducks<\/p>\n
Little went the Ducks\u2019 way in Game 5, but they could point to a power play that remains scorching hot. Alex Killorn punched in his third goal of the series \u2014 and second with the man advantage \u2014 when he cashed in Colton Dach\u2019s interference penalty and briefly gave the Ducks hope by narrowing their deficit to 3-1.<\/p>\n
The Ducks have at least one power-play goal in every game. Killorn\u2019s tally gave them their seventh goal in 14 opportunities, most among all playoff teams. Goals have come from both their units, with Cutter Gauthier and Mikael Granlund also getting two each and Troy Terry scoring the other one. Gauthier and Killorn are part of their second unit, but Ducks coach Joel Quenneville sees both as equal in terms of ability. \u201cIt keeps a lot of players happy on the bench that gets that extra power-play touch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those situations where I think they both know when they\u2019re out there, let\u2019s go hard and score when you\u2019re out there,\u201d Quenneville added. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t, be comfortable you\u2019re going to get back out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 The search required four games, three losses and one trip to the brink of elimination, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,2070,404],"class_list":["post-291171","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\/291171","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=291171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}