ANAHEIM — With their team’s 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.
What’s the difference between today’s Darnell Nurse and the kid who showed up at this rink for his first NHL Game 7 back in 2017?
“The more exposure, the more times you go through it, you just enjoy playing in them more,” 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. “There’s a tension that you feel when you’re 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.”
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’ve been taught.
Edmonton wanted a low-event, lower-scoring series? Yeah, good luck with that.
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.
Now that we’ve reached critical mass in Game 6, however, a calm group from Edmonton can say, in all honesty, that this is nothing new to them.
“It’s a different feeling when you play your first NHL game compared to when you play your 500th NHL game,” said Zach Hyman, who has 42 playoff goals in 105 games. “It’s just a mentality, a mindset that for us there’s nothing unexpected.
“A lot of us played in a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. There’s a comfort to playing in those (big games). You’ve got to play your best, your season’s on the line, and you’re better at it as you play more of them.”
Down the hall from Edmonton’s 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.
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.
“We shouldn’t be surprised by their desperation,” Anaheim’s Chris Kreider said. “It’s a hard thing to close out a series. (We should) match that, and exceed that.”
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.
“It’s a different narrative every game, right? The only one that makes a big deal about it is the media,” he said. “For us, each game is the most important game in the series. We have a great opportunity (Thursday night), we’re in a great spot, so let’s put our best foot forward.”
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 — many of them for the first time — while still trying to coach wins out of them in the moment. The more games and series’ they play, the more they’ll learn, right?
Anaheim failed at its first chance to close out the series in Edmonton. This is a second chance, and you hope you don’t need a third one.
“You welcome that challenge, that it’s going to be fun to play a game where you’re going to get pushed and challenged,” Quenneville said. “You can control your destiny by doing things the right way, and you try to move on. But certainly, it’ll be a good test for everyone.
“(His players) got a little bit of exposure to going into a game and seeing how that feels like when you’ve got a chance to win.”
Both teams have used two goalies in this series, but we’re back to Connor Ingram for the Oilers and Dostal for the Ducks for Game 6. Even if their numbers have not been great.
McDavid and Jason Dickinson, as is becoming the trend, each missed Edmonton’s morning skate. McDavid will play for sure, while head coach Kris Knoblauch listed Dickinson as a “game-time decision.”
Here’s how we see them lining up:
Draisaitl — McDavid — Kapanen
Podkolzin — Nugent-Hopkins — Hyman
Savoie — Dickinson — Roslovic
Dach — Samanski — Lazar
Kreider — Carlsson — Terry
Killorn — Granlund — Sennecke
McTavish — Poeling — Gauthier
The Oilers have scored first in each game of this series, yet they’re down 3-2 in games.
What’s the biggest factor in coughing up those leads?
“Taking unnecessary penalties, and them capitalizing on the power play,” said Knoblauch. “If there’s a common theme, it’s taking penalties — a lot of them in the offensive zone — that are unnecessary, and they’re taking advantage of them and getting back into games.”
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’s simply a young player attending the school of hard knocks, but that lesson had better be learned by now.
“It’s important that everyone knows the stakes of the game, how important it is,” Knoblauch said. “It’s a little bit different than the middle of the season … just because we’ve seen it in this series. (A penalty taken) can change the projection of the way the game is going.”