Ducks dominance: Key offensive and defensive adjustments paved the way for a decisive Game 6 victory, clinching their first playoff series in eight years.
With a second opportunity to win their first playoff series in eight years, the Anaheim Ducks hosted the Edmonton Oilers for Game 6 of their first-round series on Thursday.
Anaheim won Games 2-4 and took a 3-1 series lead to Edmonton, but came up short in Tuesday’s Game 5. A poor start saw the Ducks allow three goals in ten minutes, leading head coach Joel Quenneville to pull starting goaltender Lukas Dostal after allowing said third goal.
Edmonton found a few aspects that seemed to work for them and shifted the pressure in the series back onto Anaheim’s side of the redline.
For game 5, Oilers’ head coach Kris Knoblauch put his two supernova centers on the same line, and his “break glass in case of emergency” option worked perfectly.
Before Game 2, after a Game 1 loss, Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville made a (seemingly) last-second lineup change, swapping Cutter Gauthier and Chris Kreider. For this game, he kept his cards close to his chest again, making changes to his listed first, third, and fourth forward lines. Here’s how the Ducks lined up to start this game:
Kreider-Carlsson-Terry
Killorn-Granlund-Sennecke
Viel-Poehling-Gauthier
McTavish-Washe-Moore
LaCombe-Trouba
Mintyukov-Carlson
Hinds-Helleson
Quenneville quickly shifted his lineup again in the first period, swapping McTavish and Viel onto the third and fourth lines, respectively.
Lukas Dostal got the start for the Ducks and saved 25 of 27 shots. In Edmonton’s crease, Connor Ingram got the start and stopped 26 of 30.
Game Notes
The Ducks played perhaps their best, most complete 60 minutes of hockey all season and postseason in this game. They got the start they were striving for, possessing pucks, dominating the shot count, and scoring the first two goals of the game, the first time they had scored first in a game all series.
Edmonton expectedly attempted to push back, but Anaheim, rather than sit back and allow the Oilers to attack in waves (like the Oilers did to the Ducks in Game 5), kept their foot on the gas, continuing to possess pucks and pressure puck carriers on the defensive side.
“For sure, it was our best game,” Quenneville said. “It could have been our best game all year. A lot of things went well tonight. We didn’t have to play catch-up; we had a good start. We might not have scored right away, but I still thought we had good pace, we had good possession, and we did a lot of things technically in the game that kept us having the puck a little longer than we had it most of the series.
“The power play, again, scored a timely goal for us, and I think our special teams were special in this series and made a big impact.”
Breakouts-One of the areas that allowed the Ducks to possess the puck more in this game, as opposed to Game 5, was how they exited their zone. In game 5, they were susceptible to a high-pressure forecheck from the Oilers. Forwards improved in this game in their end, recognizing when and how Edmonton was pressuring. When their defenders were forced to wrap pucks around the wall, instead of stopping it and attempting to make connecting passes that weren’t there, outlets kept pucks moving north by any means necessary.
Off-puck outlets did well to adjust accordingly, and when they knew pucks were going to be flipped high into the neutral zone, they flew the zone to pressure the Edmonton defenders tasked with retrieving. Those forwards often won neutral zone battles, sparking a rush opportunity or continuing to advance pucks deep into Edmonton’s end.
Jackson LaCombe-LaCombe’s dominance and national recognition reached even greater heights in Game 6 of this series. He played a total of 27:05 in this game, and 22:37 at 5v5. He played 14:51 hard-matched against Connor McDavid at 5v5 and won those minutes handily, as in those minutes, the Ducks accounted for 75% of the shots on goal (12-4), 62.96% of the shot attempts (17-10), 73.54% of the expected goals (0.78-0.28), and scored twice while not allowing a tally against.
He had some nervous moments in this game, as he shaded toward the “casual” side of his casual vs poised spectrum, but was efficient on his first passes and was as dominant as ever defending the rush. Never flashy and rarely drawing spectators out of their seats, LaCombe quietly eats the most difficult minutes imaginable, covering vast ice with (seemingly) little effort, and dictating pace in every zone.
Lukas Dostal-After getting yanked 10 minutes into Game 5, allowing three goals on nine shots, Dostal and the team in front of him responded as well as could have been hoped for. Citing the extra rest and time to mentally reset, Dostal was back to the standard the Ducks have become accustomed to throughout his career.
The Ducks were much improved defending the low slot in front of him, and Dostal was calm amid flurries in tight. He made countless saves look more routine than they were, and his rebound control was near-perfect, as pucks didn’t rattle around his torso and pad area. Teammates limited dangerous chances around his crease, and in return, Dostal made impactful saves on the occasions where chances were created from turnovers.
The Ducks will await the conclusion of the first-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Utah Mammoth. Vegas is leading the series 3-2, and if they win, the Ducks will start their second-round series on the road in Las Vegas. If Utah wins the next two games, the Ducks will be afforded an extra couple of days of rest and will start the second round in Orange County at Honda Center.