EDMONTON — With the Edmonton Oilers’ season on the line, Connor McDavid was listed as a game-time decision Tuesday morning.
McDavid missed morning skate along with third-line centre Jason Dickinson — also a game-time decision — on the same day the Oilers captain was named as a finalist for the Ted Lindsay Award. He was joined by Nikita Kucherov and Macklin Celebrini as nominees to be named the “most outstanding player in the NHL,” as voted by fellow members of the NHLPA.
“Least surprising news I’ve heard this morning,” quipped Leon Draisaitl.
It’s not about individual awards in Edmonton, of course. The Oilers' season is on the line in Game 5 against Anaheim Tuesday night (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+, 10 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. MT), and their top centreman and best player is too injured to take part in a morning skate. McDavid’s blades won’t touch the ice between the end of Game 4 and warmups before Game 5.
Dickinson, Edmonton’s third-line centre, has missed half the series and limped through the other half. Draisaitl is nursing a bad knee and the fourth-line centre Adam Henrique is lost for the series.
“We talked about it when we lost Leon at the end of the season,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We were missing an incredible player and we're not the same team without him, and everyone needed to step up. I thought for the most part, everyone did.
“Now, we have some guys who are banged up, and they're continuing to play and doing the best that they can do. But ultimately, everybody's got to step up a little bit.”
A telltale sign in this series has been the Oilers’ inability to sustain their game. They’ve held a lead in every game but can’t hold on to it.
Credit the Ducks, one of the best comeback teams in NHL history this season. But also, we’re not sure that some of Edmonton’s better players — including winger Zach Hyman — are healthy enough for a full 60-minute effort.
NHL players will never cop to injuries mid-series. Besides, no one cares who was hurt — only who won.
“It's not ideal right now, at the moment,” admitted Draisaitl. “But we’ve got to find a way to grind through it, and we’ve got to find a way to stick through it. We'll look to do that tonight.”
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Ingram in goal
After starting Tristan Jarry in Game 4, Knoblauch is coming back with Connor Ingram Tuesday.
Normally, Jarry’s performance in Game 4 would have been enough to earn him another start. But when you are in the position that Edmonton is — lives on the line against the young, impressive Ducks — you tend to go with the guy that brought you here.
“The last few weeks or months, Ingram has been our starter. He's been our guy,” Knoblauch said. “And now that our season is on the line, we felt we would go with our guy.”
Ingram has been merely OK through these playoffs — excellent in Game 1, less so in Game 2 and he allowed six goals in Game 3. The saves this Oilers team will require are on the penalty kill, the one area where the Ducks have tilted this series.
Anaheim’s power play is churning along at 50 per cent, ranked first in the playoffs. Edmonton’s PK is, of course, dead last at 50 per cent. That’s a series-decider right there.
“Our penalty kill, we've been giving up goals, every game,” said defenceman Connor Murphy. “Things are going to happen where we get calls against us, and we got to weather that and be able to turn it into momentum.”
Line dance
The Oilers mixed up their defensive pairings at practice, but we predict they’ll be back to normal come game time. And with Dickinson and McDavid not skating, it’s hard to tell who plays where. Assuming they both play, here’s our best guess:
Savoie-McDavid-Hyman
Podkolzin-Draisaitl-Kapanen
RNH-Dickinson-Roslovic
Dach-Lazar-Frederic
Ekholm-Bouchard
Nurse-Murphy
Walman-Emberson
Ingram
As for Anaheim, we foresee no changes in their lineup:
Kreider-Carlsson-Terry
Killorn-Granlund-Sennecke
McTavish-Poehling-Gauthier
Viel-Washe-Moore
LaCombe-Trouba
Mintyukov-Carlson
Hinds-Helleson
Dostál
Chateau LaCombe
If you’re watching the Ducks at length for the first time this season, the big revelation is defenceman Jackson LaCombe. Out west, we’ve been watching him for a while now, the 25-year-old stud No. 1 defenceman on a wildly entertaining Anaheim club.
He’s playing 24:15 per game, tops on the Ducks, and he looks like he could handle more.
“He's been really good in the series, as far as his movement, his speed of the attack, his possession. He just seems like he's playing his best hockey this season,” said head coach Joel Quenneville. “He doesn't really look like he gets tired.
“We talked about No. 2 (Duncan Keith) that we used to have in Chicago, trying to take big minutes. I mean, both almost look like there's more there.”
As the inexperienced Ducks win playoff games — and individual shifts against names like McDavid and Draisaitl — their belief is shooting through the roof.
“It gives us more confidence each game,” LaCombe said. “We're just building our game, just improving more each day, and it's important for us. We know it's going to be a huge challenge (Tuesday night), and it's only going to get harder.”
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