EDMONTON — If you subscribe to that playoff hockey axiom that states, “a series doesn’t truly begin until the road team wins a game,” then what does it mean when the Edmonton Oilers win Games 1 AND 2 on the road to open this Western Conference semifinal?
Well, on the day the Las Vegas bookies made the Oilers the favourite to win the 2017 Stanley Cup, the Anaheim Ducks chartered into enemy territory with their own odds to be concerned with.
They’ve played Edmonton three times in April and lost three times. Calgary may have an 11-year drought going in Anaheim, but the Oilers have found a matchup they like in the Ducks.
Anaheim played sloppy and lost Game 1 by a 5-3 score. Then the Ducks played a hell of a hockey game in Game 2, losing 2-1 on 39 saves by Cam Talbot.
Find a new way to lose on Sunday night in Edmonton, and Anaheim is all but done. Right…?
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“I remember back in 2011,” began former Boston Bruin Milan Lucic on Sunday morning, going back to the Cup run that ended with a Game 7 win at Vancouver. “Tim Thomas made, like, 54 saves for us on the road in Game 2 in the second round against the Flyers to give us the win. Wins and losses are the only things that matter (and) we won the next two games at home after that.
“But I also remember the year before when we were up 3-0 against the Flyers and we lost in Game 7,” Lucic recalled. “Todd [McLellan] was in San Jose and was up 3-0 to the L.A. Kings and lost in Game 7 in 2014.”
Both Lucic and McLellan share the embarrassment of being on the wrong end of 3-0 comebacks, something that has only happened four times in National Hockey League history. One happens to be the head coach in Edmonton, and the other the de facto captain.
So the Ducks may lose this thing, or they may even come back to win it. But if they do the latter, it won’t be because the Oilers got ahead of themselves.
“Someone like myself and the coaches who’ve been part of losing historic comebacks, it’s easy to pass those messages along,” Lucic said. “We also learned some lessons in the first round with the 7-0 loss in San Jose that we can’t take any situation lightly.”
Nobody saw this coming — a 2-0 Oilers lead heading home — least of all the Ducks. In Game 1 they blanketed Connor McDavid and were buried by Leon Draisaitl’s four-point night, the sixth consecutive game that the big German had scored a goal against Anaheim.
So in Game 2 they did a much better job on Draisaitl, but saw McDavid cut loose for his most impressive offensive performance in these playoffs. He went pointless, but McDavid found the kind of open-ice skating opportunities that Corey Perry said the Ducks could not allow.
“You’ve got to watch for him swinging low and picking up speed,” Perry said at the start of the series. “(Now) he’s going through the neutral zone at Mach 5. He can turn on the dime, and make plays.”
McDavid did not convert on the numerous chances he created in Game 2. Give him that man those opportunities again Sunday at Rogers Place, and history says he’ll have a two-point night up his 100-point sleeve.
The thing about Friday in Anaheim was, you couldn’t find an Oilers player or coach post-game who didn’t think their team played, as that time-honoured hockey vernacular goes, a “horse bleep game.”
Talbot? He was lights-out good. But the rest of the team wasn’t fooling themselves that they’d find another win in this series without seriously raising their level of play.
“Which might be good for us,” McLellan noted.
“We didn’t establish enough zone time or get the second and third chances to score goals in this league nowadays,” Lucic said. “We didn’t do enough to extend the lead. I’m sure the coach will find some video for us to improve.”
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So the Oilers are playing well and winning, with six wins in their past seven playoff games. And they’re even winning when they don’t play so well, that rare card you can perhaps play once in a series — but seldom twice.
The Ducks, on the other hand, have to be wondering. They beat the Oilers for fun for a decade — now they’re 0-2 and going into a building and city that is fully engulfed in Stanley Cup hopes. At this point, maybe even expectations.
“Like I’ve been saying,” said McDavid, “it’s fun to be an Oiler right now.”
Fun indeed. For anyone but water fowl.
