EDMONTON, AB – Didn’t quack under pressure.
Jason Dickinson and Kasperi Kapanen each scored twice for the Edmonton Oilers, who battled through adversity to score the late winner with 1:54 left in regulation on Monday night in a 4-3 victory over the Anaheim Ducks in Game 1 of their first-round series at Rogers Place.
Dickinson made it 3-3 with 8:30 left in regulation by notching his second of the game before Kapanen followed suit to deliver the game-winner with under two minutes remaining, overturning Anaheim’s lead after they erased the pair’s first-period tallies by scoring three unanswered goals in the middle frame.
“You’re not always going to have your best game, but you want to play close to it,” Kapanen said post-game. “It won’t be easy to follow up a game like that, scoring two big goals, but I think just putting in the work and doing the little things that help this team out, whether it’s on the PK or getting on the forecheck and being hard to play against, that’s just kind of my process for what I’m trying to do out there.”
Dickinson marked his return to the lineup with his first two playoff goals for the Oilers, along with Leon Draisaitl coming back to produce two assists in the victory in his first game since Mar. 15 after he missed the last 14 games of the season due to injury.
“You want to play in these moments, because it makes everything worth it,” Dickinson said. “All the bumps, the bruises, the training, the hours spent away from the family doing things that your friends aren’t doing because you’ve got something you’re chasing, it’s great to be a part of it. It’s all about just going out there and competing with these guys and having fun doing it. That’s really all it comes down to.”
Vasily Podkolzin and Jake Walman also contributed two assists, while Mattias Ekholm and Ty Emberson produced single helpers to help the Oilers rally to victory in their first game of a new playoff campaign against a young Ducks squad.
Goaltender Connor Ingram made 25 saves for his first-career playoff victory, including two massive stops on Sennecke and Carlsson in the third period that allowed the Oilers to push on for the winner late in regulation.
The Oilers & Ducks will continue their first-round series on Wednesday with Game 2 at Rogers Place.
