Oilers Hold Off Ducks, Force Game 6
We all had a pretty similar idea of what the Edmonton Oilers needed heading into Game 5 of their first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks. Get out fast, build a lead early enough that if Connor McDavid needed to be managed for the last half of the game, he could be. And for two periods, that's more or less what happened.
Vasily Podkolzin opened the scoring in the first, Zach Hyman and Leon Draisaitl followed. Draisaitl struck again in the second to make it 4-1 after Alex Killorn scored a lone goal for Anaheim. The third period came and went without a goal, and a 4-1 final sends this series back to Anaheim for Game 6.
Sounds like a successful game right? Not according to head coach Kris Knoblauch. The Oilers sat back in the third, according to the coach.
They played safe, got a little passive, and the Ducks pushed without ever really facing the threat of more goals against. "I thought we sat back too much," said Knoblauch. "Which can happen when the other team is pushing.
I felt the last two periods we were playing safe. " Oilers Message As They Face Elimination in Game 5 Against Ducks "Whenever you let in four plus goals, your odds of winning are not that high, so we need to fix that," said Kasperi Kapanen after Tuesday's morning skate, delivering the kind of plainspoken and rather obvious statements that seem to come so easily to NHL players. Perhaps worth keeping an eye on because a team that spends the third period on its heels in Game 6, on the road, still down 3-2 in the series, probably doesn't escape as cleanly.
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