The Ducks' strategic play has the powerhouse Oilers on the brink of elimination, forcing Edmonton into a desperate fight for survival.
“A cornered animal is almost as dangerous as a wounded one,” -Cameron Dokey
The Edmonton Oilers, the back-to-back Western Conference Champions, the team that employs two of the top five (perhaps two of the top two) players in the world, find themselves down 3-1 in their first round series of the 2026 NHL Playoffs to the Anaheim Ducks, as the series shifts back to Edmonton for an elimination Game 5.
The Oilers are hungry, they are wounded, they are cornered, they are dangerous.
“They’re going to be fighting for their lives, and we want to make sure that (we know that) this is the most important game that we’ve faced,” Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville said on Monday, ahead of Tuesday’s Game 5. “Knowing that the challenge of playing a game where you have a chance to move forward. I think we’ve got a real competitive bunch. I think they’ll see that’s where it’s at.
“We can only control our end of it, and I expect them to have a bigger push than they had last game, which was a big push. Let’s expect it and go from there.”
Hungry
As mentioned, the Oilers have represented the Western Conference in the last two Stanley Cup Finals, losing each time to the Florida Panthers, in seven games in 2024 and six in 2025. Leon Draisaitl (30) and Connor McDavid (29), potentially the world’s two best centers, are smack-dab in the middle of their primes. Draisaitl is signed to a long-term contract that expires in 2033, but McDavid has a two-year deal that will kick in at the start of the 2026-27 season. Their window to win championships is right now.
Wounded
Edmonton has had a difficult bout with the injury bug, specifically to the center ice position, down the stretch of the regular season and into the playoffs. Draisaitl missed the last 14 games of the 2025-26 regular season with a lower-body injury.
Depth center and impactful deadline acquisition, Jason Dickinson, missed the final three games of the regular season as well as games 2-3 of this series with a lower-body injury. In a similar boat, veteran fourth-line center and top penalty killer, Adam Henrique, has missed all but 2:56 TOI this series due to a lower-body injury. And finally, McDavid, the world’s best hockey player, in his prime, cup-less, and Olympic gold medal-less, appeared in discomfort in the second period of Game 2. He was flexing his right leg and spent a few minutes in the Oilers’ locker room with medical staff before returning to action. He and head coach Kris Knoblauch have remained quiet when questioned on the subject.
Corinne Votaw-Imagn ImagesCornered
For just the second time in the McDavid-Draisaitl era, the Oilers are down in a series 3-1, with the only other time being the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, where they went down 3-0 and stormed back to tie the series at 3-3, before ultimately losing Game 7.
Off the ice, they’ve been comfortable to this point. They’ve remained even-keeled at every media availability, perhaps frustratingly so in the eyes of Oilers fans and media. They appear to be toeing the line between casual and confident. McDavid even ended the regular season by saying, “The regular season has become a little bit monotonous for this group, and I think you see that through the day-to-day. But this is what we get excited for.”
That tune has changed slightly since they now find themselves on the brink of elimination, but the tone has remained.
“We’re in a hole. We’re in a hole, no doubt about it. We’ve got to find a way to get a win at home,” McDavid said after the Oilers’ Game 4 overtime loss.
“It’s not really about ‘Connor McDavid’ here,” he continued postgame. “This is about two teams that are trying to figure each other out. Obviously, they’re playing well, and we’ve got another level, as a group.”
Dangerous
In the McDavid-Draisaitl era, the Oilers are 8-7 when facing elimination. The center duo has a combined 42 points in those 15 games (McDavid with 23 points, and Draisaitl with 19). Under Knoblauch, they are 19-5 in Games 4-7, seemingly saving their best for the end of series.
It would benefit Anaheim to close the series out as quickly as possible (obvious statement). Though they’re 0-1 in series when down 3-1, the Oilers have won two of the four when they’ve trailed 3-2.
Edmonton has (maybe) the two best players in the world, who have a combined 2273 career points in 1649 regular season games and a combined 302 points in 200 playoff games. They currently deploy their deepest roster since McDavid entered the league, complete with depth scoring options and a Norris-contending, 95-point defenseman along their blueline (Evan Bouchard).
If there were a team in these playoffs that could pull off such a comeback and win three games in a row with their backs against the wall, it’s the Edmonton Oilers.
The Ducks as their Foil
Despite making the playoffs for the first time in eight years, the 2025-26 Ducks were one of the regular season’s worst defensive teams by any underlying or traditional metric. In the regular season, they endured a nine-game winless streak that started in late Dec., a six-game winless streak that started in late March, and backed into the playoffs, only winning two of their final ten games. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they experienced two seven-game winning streaks and a five-game winning streak during the very same regular season.
The Ducks, incredibly streaky, talented, and resilient, trailed in all but one of their 30 post-Olympic regular season games, but earned 16 wins, regardless. They’ve trailed and given up the opening goal in every game this series, battling back each time, taking a 3-1 series lead to Edmonton for Game 5, and putting a Cup contender on the ropes.
Corinne Votaw-Imagn ImagesPerhaps the Ducks are too young and naive to grasp the gravity of their situation. They aren’t supposed to be in this position in their young core’s first playoff appearance and their franchise’s first playoff series in eight years. Perhaps they do grasp it, and they simply don’t care, rising to the occasion each time. Perhaps they've found a switch and flipped it.
“You can’t get ahead of yourself because every game is a new challenge,” Quenneville said. “Every game, the momentum is so important, and making sure that you do the little things well. Younger guys sometimes might be a little carried away with the game
“Knowing that simplicity sometimes is better and finding that balance is something else that we try to remind them about. At the same time, you don’t want to take away from what makes them special players,”
Led by a future Hall of Fame head coach, Quenneville, the Ducks have adjusted and counter-adjusted to everything the Oilers have thrown their way. Tactically, the Ducks have dragged Edmonton into track meets through the first four games of the series, and when the Oilers attempted to play a more north-south, streamlined game in Game 5, Anaheim answered mid-game with a simplified version of their own game as well.
In this series, the Ducks have been persistent on backchecks to disrupt Edmonton's rush abilities, they've made smarter decisions with pucks in precarious areas of the ice, and they've protected the low slot to a greater extent than they'd shown in the regular season.
Their special teams, an area of pain in the regular season, have been a key factor in their success to this point in the series as well. Their power play deploys two cohesive units and is converting at a 50% clip, the best rate in the NHL. Their penalty kill, against the regular season’s top power play (Edmonton), has killed seven out of ten penalties.
“I think we’ve had a real good approach going into the playoffs,” Quenneville said. “I know that it was something we strived for at the beginning of the year, and the first game was a terrible loss. It was very disappointing, and then I thought that we felt that we had to get better every game.
“I thought that last night (Game 4) our start wasn’t on the pace of the expectations of what we left Game 3 with. I still thought we got going there later in the first to get ourselves back to get on that pace where we’re consistently playing at a high level and looking to improve off of the prior games, and we were able to get ourselves back in the game, which was a big chore.”
Anaheim has been the perfect storm for the Oilers through four games with their blend of elite, skillful youth and a crop of experienced veterans peppered throughout the lineup to shepherd them through success and turmoil.
The Ducks will have three opportunities to defeat the Oilers and advance to the second round, though they’ll want to close it out as soon as possible if they can. The puck will drop for Game 5 at 7 pm PST, and the Ducks will have the opportunity to win a round and advance to the Western Conference semifinals of the playoffs for the first time since 2017.