For the Anaheim Ducks, Game 5 was a mix. A bad start, a better finish but overall, probably best forgotten.<\/p>\n
“I always find in the course of a (Stanley Cup) Playoff series there’s one game you want to throw in the can, just wasn’t up to par and you’re wondering, ‘Why, why, why?'” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said Wednesday. “It happens, it seems, every year, every playoff round.”<\/p>\n
Before tossing that game, the Ducks took a powerful lesson out of it: be ready for the start, or you’re going to be in trouble. They’ll need to apply it when they again try to eliminate the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 of the Western Conference First Round at Honda Center on Thursday (10 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, Victory+, truTV, TNT, KCOP-13, SN360, SN, TVAS, CBC).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Ducks lead the best-of-7 series 3-2 after losing 4-1 at Rogers Place on Tuesday. They’re 11-4 in potential series-clinching games on home ice, most recently when they defeated the Oilers 2-1 in Game 7 of the 2017 second round.<\/p>\n
Quenneville’s also familiar with these scenarios. As an NHL coach, he’s 19-6 in Game 6 and 12-1 when it’s a potential series clincher. Much of that came as coach of the Chicago Blackhawks (2008-18), who he guided to the Stanley Cup in 2010, 2013 and 2015, but it’s something that benefits the Ducks.<\/p>\n
“It’s great that the crowd’s going to be excited,” Quenneville said. “We’re looking forward to it. Game 6s, they have a lot of meaning, lot of momentum. Going in we have to recapture it, and I think you get that immediately when you skate around in warmup and feel the crowd. They’ve been very supportive all year long. They’ve been great the first two home games. We expect a big home crowd that’s going to be ready to go, and we’ll be ready to go.”<\/p>\n
The Ducks won Games 3 and 4 in Anaheim by a combined score of 11-7. To make it count on home ice, they have to get off to a much better start than in Game 5. The Oilers came out strong. The Ducks said they expected that, but they didn’t come with the same fervor and Edmonton led 3-0 in the first 10:13 of the opening period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the Anaheim Ducks, Game 5 was a mix. A bad start, a better finish but overall, probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-292545","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\/292545","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=292545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}