EDMONTON, AB – “I think we proved it to ourselves,” Troy Terry said.
In the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Playoff game in eight years with 13 players making their postseason debuts in a raucous road atmosphere against two of the world’s very best players, the Anaheim Ducks did not look out of their depth on Monday at Rogers Place.
Anaheim did take the series’s first body blow, as the Edmonton Oilers rallied in the third period and netted the go-ahead goal with just under two minutes remaining to take a seesaw Game 1, 4-3, but aside from the waving towels and full-throated pre-game singing of “O, Canada” from the sellout Edmonton crowd, the playoff opener was functionally not much different than a typical Ducks game this season.
A pair of singular misplays put Anaheim on the back foot in the first period, as the Oilers pounced to a 2-0 lead. As the Ducks do, they responded while trailing and did so immediately. Terry scored his first of two second-period goals (three points in the period) just 19 seconds into the middle frame, and Leo Carlsson tied the game four minutes later. Terry’s second put the Ducks ahead into the third period.
Another singular gaffe allowed the Oilers to tie with 9:30 left in the game, and soft defensive coverage gave Edmonton an opening to net the eventual game winner with just under two minutes remaining. Even still, the Ducks nearly pulled out their game-tying magic in the final seconds, but the Oilers still earned the series’ opening salvo.
“Great atmosphere in the start too. First five minutes felt like a playoff game,” Carlsson said, “then it was just kind of not exactly the same thing, but also didn't feel like a first playoff game either. Good second period, but it wasn’t enough.”
There are plenty of nitty gritty X’s and O’s to dissect from Game 1, but the top line takeaway from the Anaheim locker room: the Ducks are here and far from out of it.
“We have a pretty big number of guys that it's their first time (in the playoffs). You know, it seems daunting almost, the excitement and everything,” Terry said. “It's unfortunate the result of that game, and it's gonna be tough to swallow, but we gotta put it behind us. I think we kind of got our feet under us, and we're into this thing now.”
Now with the shock and awe of a playoff opener out of the way, Anaheim can learn to settle into a playoff series and take its first shot at a response in Game 2 on Wednesday.
“That was a tough loss,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. “We did a lot of good things right, and we're happy about certain things. Disappointed, but creates a more desperate appetite going forward.”
“It's one game. There's a lot of hockey left.”
Dazzling Debutants
The opening period in Edmonton featured all the sights, sounds and reverberating pressure that the Stanley Cup Playoffs can provide, and the Oilers rode that wave, as the crowd blew the roof off Rogers Place with the home team’s two opening first-period strikes (more on those shortcomings shortly).
For a line-up that featured just six players with previous playoff experience ranging from Alex Killorn’s 140 postseason games and two Stanley Cup championships to Radko Gudas’ 57 appearances, it’d be easy to understand a deer-in-the-headlights rollover in the remaining 40 minutes, especially considering there’s no way of knowing how this team would handle this pressure cooker of playoff adversity.
“We’ve got to get in here,” Joel Quenneville said Tuesday morning. “We’ve got to find out about our team here.”
Anaheim found out that rolling over is not what Troy Terry waited eight years to do and certainly not what Leo Carlsson was drafted No. 2 overall three years ago to do, either.
In this playoff opener, it was Anaheim’s playoff rookies that locked in and turned the tide immediately in the second period.
Jackson LaCombe cut into the zone and fed Carlsson criss-crossing to the left wing, where he shot and created a rebound that Terry put home 19 seconds in to get the Ducks on the board. That was the second-fastest period-opening goal in Ducks playoff history behind only Samuel Pahlsson’s 14-second strike in Game 5 of the 2007 second round.
Just over four minutes later, Terry and Carlsson flipped the feat, as Terry’s shot created a rebound that Carlsson popped in to tie the game, 2-2. Terry and Carlsson became just the second and third players in Ducks playoff history with multi-point games in their playoff debuts. Paul Kariya was the first back in 1997.
Terry continued his surge with a power-play wrister 10 minutes later to put the Ducks in front, 3-2, and put any lingering memory of the first period well in the back of their minds.
“I think just maybe the goal sparked it, just to kind of settle us down,” Terry said, “and I don't know what it was. I just felt like we came out in the second, and we're settled in. We had kind of got that first period under our belt, and I just thought we played right with them.”
Terry matched the franchise playoff record for points in a single period, which has been done six times, most recently by Ryan Getzlaf in 2017 against the Oilers. Terry also matched the franchise playoff record for goals in a single period, which has been hit 13 times, also most recently by Getzlaf in that same instance.
Terry was also the fourth player in Ducks history to factor on the first three goals of a postseason, joining Kariya in 1999, Steve Rucchin in 1999 and Corey Perry in 2015.
Those second-period strikes were the only ones the Ducks would ultimately garner.
Veteran Letdowns
Where the Ducks playoff rookies led the second-period surge, it was some of Anaheim’s most experienced players that factored in their fall.
With Edmonton already catching rookie Tyson Hinds (in just his seventh NHL game) flat-footed on the rush for the opening strike, Chris Kreider gifted the Oilers possession and a chaos chance at the end of the ensuing shift.
With half the Ducks on the ice looking for a line change, Kreider opted not to dump the puck deep but instead tossed a backhand no-look pass behind him to no one in particular. Pavel Mintyukov tried to react to the play as Kreider skated to the bench, but he lost the board battle. With half the ice open, Edmonton attacked, John Carlson couldn’t swat away a rebound and the Oilers doubled their lead, 2-0.
“Gave up a couple in the first, and not happy at all about,” Quenneville said. “Those plays are preventable.”
Then with the 3-2 lead into the third period, captain Radko Gudas fell while skating backwards to defend an Oilers rush, and again, Edmonton pounced with a big shot by Mattias Ekholm and Jason Dickinson there to tie the game on the rebound, 3-3.
“It's an unfortunate bounce, and all of a sudden they're coming again,” Quenneville said, “but we're in the right place, even if it does go to overtime or late in the third, we seem to be all right in those situations, and they beat us to the punch.”
With two minutes left, Leon Draisaitl made his biggest impact on the game–his first in returning from injury–as he held off Carlsson and cut inside of LaCombe to gain the deep part of the Ducks zone. Draisaitl circled up the boards, now bracketed by Terry and Jacob Trouba and dumped low to Vasily Podkolzin, Carlsson and LaCombe then cut off Podkolzin behind the net.
However, Kasperi Kapanen beat Trouba back to the slot, and Podkolzin feathered it to the Finn for the go-ahead goal.
When the Ducks gave the Oilers any bit of air, they took it.
“That's what it's all about, detailed habits, systems, tightening it up and playing the right way, playing with a purpose,” Quenneville said. “I mean, this team, we can't give anything that's not–they have to earn it. We'll probably say that again.”
Razor’s Edge of Silver Linings
On the one hand, everything that Terry said at the top of this story is true.
The Anaheim Ducks more than acquitted themselves as ready for playoff hockey. They absorbed the early moments, came back with a surging response, and even despite the third-period gaffes, they were a missed shot on the doorstep away from another game-tying goal in the final seconds.
It’s one game, and the Ducks are far from out of this series.
“As a group, we proved to ourselves, we're right there,” Terry said. “We just, like you said, these little mental mistakes that can sway a series one way or the other.”
However, on the other side of that coin, it was a game the Ducks very well could have had. Anaheim led into the third period, and the game was still tied in the final five minutes.
It was a game where they held Connor McDavid off the scoresheet, and the Oilers had been 0-12-2 this season when McDavid was held scoreless. For a likely Hart Trophy finalist with 138 points to his name this season, that is unlikely to happen much in a seven-game series.
So much of this is still a learning experience for the young core of this Ducks team, but it’s also an opportunity to do more than take their lumps. They proved they are capable, but now’s the time to take advantage.
“We saw the pace that's gonna be necessary, the purpose, we know that it's gonna be diligent throughout the game,” Quenneville said. “It's one game. We're coming back here. We'd love to get a split. Got some motivation right now, but we'll digest this one overnight.”