Lukas Dostal made 46 saves as the Anaheim Ducks stunned the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 Saturday afternoon at Rogers Place.
The Oilers outshot the Ducks 49-17, including 23-2 in the third period.
“It’s frustrating right now but we can’t hang our heads,” Leon Draisaitl said. “We’ve got to park it and learn from it. We’ve got a big road trip coming up.”
The Oilers went ahead five minutes into the game when Darnell Nurse drifted a long shot past Lukas Dostal for his fifth of the season. Anaheim scored twice in the final six minutes of the period. Mason McTavish set up a wide-open Sam Carrick for a tap in. On the power play, Cam Fowler fired a point shot past Stuart Skinner.
“We weren’t sharp in the first two periods,” Leon Draisaitl said. “We turned it on in the third, but too many mistakes.”
“It was another odd read for me,” Skinner said. “I knew it was coming but I was drifting to the left just to have a sightline and I kind of lost it for a second. It was another good shot — it was long enough I should probably have that — but NHL teams are good.”
In the second, Evan Bouchard turned the puck over to Ryan Strome at the Ducks blue line. Strome went in along and beat Skinner glove-side to make it 3-1 Ducks. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins pushed in a pinballing puck on the power play to pull the Oilers within one in the last minute of the session.
“It’s happened too much recently,” Bouchard said of his mistake. “I think I’ve got to go back to the fundamentals and keep things simple.”
“He’s a young defenceman that’s going through a stretch where simplicity may be his way out of it rather than complexity,” head coach Jay Woodcroft said of Bouchard. “He’s a young man that’s learning his way in the National Hockey League and unfortunately those chances against ended up in our net —the margins were thin today.”
Connor McDavid buried his 28th on a two-man advantage to pull the Oilers even two minutes into the third. The Ducks waddled back in front four minutes later when John Klingberg whizzed a shot from the right wing boards over Skinner’s right shoulder.
“Too many individual mistakes from everyone — defencemen and forwards too,” Draisaitl said.
The Oilers went on the power play with 3:43 left when Trevor Zegras was nabbed for tripping Tyson Barrie. McDavid hit the post on a one-timer, and the puck hit the post on the resulting rebound as well.
The Oilers, 17-14-1, will play in Nashville on Monday (Face-off Show at 4:30 p.m., game at 6 p.m.)
— With files from Brenden Escott, 630 CHED