Oilers struggle to keep up with Ducks in Game 3 loss

ANAHEIM — Too quick. Too big. And so far, too good.

They’re making the Edmonton Oilers look old and slow, these flashy young Anaheim Ducks.

“They’re on top of us. They’re forechecking hard. They’re winning a lot of pucks, and we’ve just got to win more battles,” observed defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “We’ve got to execute at a higher level. We haven’t brought close to our best yet.”

A wildly exciting, track meet of a Round 1 series is now led 2-1 by Anaheim, after a firewagon 7-4 win on Friday night.

The teams were tied until they weren’t. The Oilers kept up — until they couldn’t.

There’s a way for the veteran Oilers to beat the Ducks, but it requires Edmonton to play like a team that has taken some institutional knowledge from all those playoff battles of yore.

“You can help their speed or deter their speed, depending on how you play. We’re helping their speed right now,” said Zach Hyman, a minus-2 on a night when Edmonton’s top unit of five went a collective minus-14. “If you play the way that you want to play, you can control the flow of the game yourself.

“Any time you let in seven, it’s not a goalie problem. It’s just (about) defending better,” Hyman said. “You’re not going to win (like this). We didn’t give ourselves a chance with the amount of goals we gave up.”

You know what else has to happen? Connor McDavid and Evan Bouchard — two pillars of this Oilers team — have to play much, much better.

McDavid is hurt, we suspect.

Though he had a goal and an assist Friday — his first points of the series — he lacks the dynamic bursts we have become accustomed to. McDavid has not pivoted on a dime once in this series, a trademark move, and at one point turned down a foot race against a Ducks defender that he’d never shy away from when healthy.

As for Bouchard, it’s the decision-making in his game that is nowhere near playoff level.

It’s pretty simple: Bouchard plays the most minutes on the team, averaging 24:51 per game in the playoffs thus far. If too many of those are bad minutes, rife with bad risks, lost battles and turnovers, you simply won’t win.

When your sixth defenceman is shaky, you sit him. When your No. 1 is as unreliable as Bouchard has been through three games, you’ll simply lose more than you’ll win — period.

Does head coach Kris Knoblauch need more out of his best players?

“Yeah, I’d say that’s…,” he said, before catching himself. “They certainly carried us the previous two years. They absolutely did. Right now, to say that it’s all on their shoulders is completely unfair. I think everyone needs to step up a little bit.”

Edmonton kept this one in check at 3-3 after 40 minutes, despite being outshot 31-19. But two quick goals at 2:53 and 3:35 of the third put this game on ice — both odd-man rushes borne from unforced Bouchard turnovers.

On the first goal, by Beckett Sennecke, Bouchard passed up a close-in shot and made a pass that was picked off and turned into a two-on-one. It was not a play you make in the third period of a tied playoff game — egregious does not do it justice.

On the second goal, barely 30 seconds later, Bouchard erred on a 10-foot pass to Leon Draisaitl. A passer of his acumen makes that pass in his sleep, but alas, this one was tipped right to Troy Terry, and Leo Carlsson scored on the ensuing two-on-one.

The Ducks’ finish was excellent on both goals. Edmonton’s start was even more effective for Anaheim.

“Tonight and in Game 2 we keep shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Kasperi Kapanen, whose line with Draisaitl and Vasily Podkolzin scored twice and was by far Edmonton’s best unit. “I feel like we’re giving them these wins. It’s disappointing, but it’s a race to four wins.

“We’re not going to panic but we have to learn from our mistakes and just be better next game.”

The Oilers will hold practice at the Honda Center on Saturday, though a team that’s been through as many playoff battles as this one won’t need Knoblauch and his staff to inform them about what’s been missing.

They’ve trailed series 2-0 and won. They’ve been behind 3-2 and won — twice. They’ve come back from down 3-0 to force a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final.

If Edmonton has an advantage over Anaheim, then the time has come to play that card.

“There’s a lot of hockey left to be played, right?” said Ekholm. “The momentum shifts, the swings. We’ve all been through it in here. So (they’ll) lean on that, take a deep breath, and know that the sun’s going to come up tomorrow.

“We’ve got a big game coming up here in Game 4.”