Eight years after their last home playoff game, the Anaheim Ducks turned Honda Center into the loudest place in southern California on April 24, scoring four unanswered goals in the third period to beat the Edmonton Oilers 7-4 and take a 2-1 lead in their Western Conference first-round series.
The Oilers carried the play through 40 minutes, outshooting the Ducks 32-20 across the night and trading punches in a game that had already produced six goals through two periods. Vasily Podkolzin opened the scoring for Edmonton in the first; Mason McTavish and Mikael Granlund replied for Anaheim before the break. Kasperi Kapanen and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins made it 3-3, then 4-3, before Alex Killorn restored the tie at four heading into the third.
The third period belonged to the home side. Beckett Sennecke scored his first NHL playoff goal at 2:53 to break the deadlock, Leo Carlsson made it 6-4 less than a minute later, Connor McDavid pulled one back on the power-play, and Jeffrey Viel iced the result with a snap shot at 16:57 before Jackson LaCombe sealed it with an empty-netter.
"It sounded like an army out there," Sennecke said of a Honda Center crowd that has waited eight years for a home playoff game and nine years for a home playoff win. "They've been waiting eight years for this, nine years for a win." Joel Quenneville, the Ducks coach steering a young roster through its first taste of post-season hockey, used his post-game on his rookies. "Hopefully, they turn out to be great players because they've shown all the ingredients," he said.
For Edmonton, the seven-goal night reignited the same defensive concerns that have hung over the Oilers all season. "Any time you let in seven, it's not a goalie problem, it's just defending better," Zach Hyman said. Coach Kris Knoblauch was not happy. "You look at the goals against and just some stuff that shouldn't happen, especially this time of the year," he said. Defenceman Mattias Ekholm took the responsibility on himself: "Obviously, it was not good enough from us tonight. It starts with me, it starts with the guys I'm out there with."
The series has so far refused to settle into anything resembling traditional playoff hockey. "I think in all three games there's been a lot of offense, a lot of pucks have gone in the net, lead changes, momentum, excitement," Quenneville said. Mikael Granlund admitted afterwards that the Ducks would prefer otherwise. "We'd rather play safer, I guess. We'd rather play a more safe game, for sure," he said. The next chance to find out comes Sunday at 9:30 p.m. ET, with Anaheim hosting Game 4 and Edmonton needing to recover the kind of structure that Knoblauch fears has gone missing.
