With their team\u2019s season on the line again, Edmonton Oilers fans will watch nervously Thursday night. More so than the players, actually, who have been in more of these games over the years than you can count.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the difference between today\u2019s Darnell Nurse and the kid who showed up at this rink for his first NHL Game 7 back in 2017?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more exposure, the more times you go through it, you just enjoy playing in them more,\u201d said Nurse, who will hit the 100-game mark in Game 6 (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+, 7:30 p.m. MT \/ 9:30 p.m. ET) in NHL post-season games played, a mark that Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid hit in Game 4. \u201cThere\u2019s a tension that you feel when you\u2019re going through them the first few times. But (now), in moments like this, our group seems to enjoy it. We just want to come out here, play, and let the result take care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, in a series that was billed as the teachers from Edmonton versus the students of Anaheim, the young Ducks have meted out more lessons than they\u2019ve been taught.<\/p>\n
Edmonton wanted a low-event, lower-scoring series? Yeah, good luck with that.<\/p>\n
This has turned into the highest-scoring series in all of Round 1, while Anaheim (4.2 goals per game) and Edmonton (3.8) sit atop the league in playoff goal scoring through five games.<\/p>\n
Now that we\u2019ve reached critical mass in Game 6, however, a calm group from Edmonton can say, in all honesty, that this is nothing new to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a different feeling when you play your first NHL game compared to when you play your 500th NHL game,\u201d said Zach Hyman, who has 42 playoff goals in 105 games. \u201cIt\u2019s just a mentality, a mindset that for us there\u2019s nothing unexpected.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of us played in a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. There\u2019s a comfort to playing in those (big games). You\u2019ve got to play your best, your season\u2019s on the line, and you\u2019re better at it as you play more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take two<\/p>\n
Down the hall from Edmonton\u2019s room lies a Ducks team that is getting a do-over on closing out an opponent, after giving up three goals in the opening 10 minutes in their first try in Game 5, a 4-1 loss in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
In that game, goaltender Lukas Dostal gave up a goal on the opening shot by Edmonton for the second straight game, and the 12th time this season. He was pulled in Game 5 but gets his net back Thursday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be surprised by their desperation,\u201d Anaheim\u2019s Chris Kreider said. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard thing to close out a series. (We should) match that, and exceed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As 35-year-old veteran of 128 playoff games, Kreider does not see the need to share his experience in these situations with his younger teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a different narrative every game, right? The only one that makes a big deal about it is the media,\u201d he said. \u201cFor us, each game is the most important game in the series. We have a great opportunity (Thursday night), we\u2019re in a great spot, so let\u2019s put our best foot forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville is in the fascinating position of watching his younger players gain valuable experience through the highs and lows of a playoff run \u2014 many of them for the first time \u2014 while still trying to coach wins out of them in the moment. The more games and series\u2019 they play, the more they\u2019ll learn, right?<\/p>\n
Anaheim failed at its first chance to close out the series in Edmonton. This is a second chance, and you hope you don\u2019t need a third one.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou welcome that challenge, that it\u2019s going to be fun to play a game where you\u2019re going to get pushed and challenged,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cYou can control your destiny by doing things the right way, and you try to move on. But certainly, it\u2019ll be a good test for everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201c(His players) got a little bit of exposure to going into a game and seeing how that feels like when you\u2019ve got a chance to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Line dance<\/p>\n
Both teams have used two goalies in this series, but we\u2019re back to Connor Ingram for the Oilers and Dostal for the Ducks for Game 6. Even if their numbers have not been great.<\/p>\n
McDavid and Jason Dickinson, as is becoming the trend, each missed Edmonton\u2019s morning skate. McDavid will play for sure, while head coach Kris Knoblauch listed Dickinson as a \u201cgame-time decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how we see them lining up:<\/p>\n
Oilers<\/p>\n
Draisaitl \u2014 McDavid \u2014 Kapanen<\/p>\n
Podkolzin \u2014 Nugent-Hopkins \u2014 Hyman<\/p>\n
Savoie \u2014 Dickinson \u2014 Roslovic<\/p>\n
Dach \u2014 Samanski \u2014 Lazar<\/p>\n
Ekholm \u2014 Bouchard<\/p>\n
Nurse \u2014 Murphy<\/p>\n
Walman \u2014 Emberson<\/p>\n
Ingram<\/p>\n
Ducks<\/p>\n
Kreider \u2014 Carlsson \u2014 Terry<\/p>\n
Killorn \u2014 Granlund \u2014 Sennecke<\/p>\n
McTavish \u2014 Poeling \u2014 Gauthier<\/p>\n
Viel \u2014 Washe \u2014 Moore<\/p>\n
LaCombe \u2014 Trouba<\/p>\n
Mintyukov \u2014 Carlson<\/p>\n
Hinds \u2014 Helleson<\/p>\n
Dostal<\/p>\n
Box score<\/p>\n
The Oilers have scored first in each game of this series, yet they\u2019re down 3-2 in games.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the biggest factor in coughing up those leads?<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking unnecessary penalties, and them capitalizing on the power play,\u201d said Knoblauch. \u201cIf there\u2019s a common theme, it\u2019s taking penalties \u2014 a lot of them in the offensive zone \u2014 that are unnecessary, and they\u2019re taking advantage of them and getting back into games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two of those have been taken by young Josh Samanski, a pair of avoidable infractions that resulted in a pair of Anaheim power-play goals. That\u2019s simply a young player attending the school of hard knocks, but that lesson had better be learned by now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that everyone knows the stakes of the game, how important it is,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit different than the middle of the season \u2026 just because we\u2019ve seen it in this series. (A penalty taken) can change the projection of the way the game is going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their team\u2019s season on the line again, Edmonton Oilers fans will watch nervously Thursday night. More so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-294233","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\/294233","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=294233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}