For the first time this season the Edmonton Oilers face elimination from the 2026 playoffs. Not many expected them to be facing elimination this early in the postseason, but this is their reality. They need to respond.

The Oilers are in this position due to their inability to hold leads, kill penalties, and play sound defensively in the second period. The Oilers are 1-3 despite scoring first in every game. The other 15 playoff teams are 21-8 when scoring first. The Oilers have started well each game but haven’t been able to hold a lead.

They led 2-0 in Game 1, and gave up three goals in the second period before scoring twice in the third to win 4-3.

In Game 2, they led 1-0, then gave up three straight goals. They did eventually tie the game 4-4 with 13:51 remaining, but Anaheim scored 1:17 later and won 6-4.

In Game 3, they scored first, but Anaheim scored twice in a span of 1:27 late in the first period and led 2-1. The Oilers had their best second period of the series as they scored twice in a span of 1:42 early in the second frame, but Anaheim tied it later in the period and then outscored Edmonton 4-1 in the third.

In Game 4, Kasperi Kapanen scored 37 seconds into the game. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins made it 2-0 only 6:32 into the first period, but once again the Oilers couldn’t hold the lead. Anaheim scored twice in the second period. Edmonton regained the lead on an Evan Bouchard power play goal early in the third, but the Anaheim Ducks tied it and then won in overtime.

The Oilers haven’t spent much time leading, tied or trailing in this series, but they are down 3-1.

GAMES	LEADING	TIED	TRAILING
1	9:11	33:48	17:01
2	3:50	20:11	35:59
3	10:04	26:37	23:19
4	48:09	14:20	0

Edmonton didn’t trail in Game 4 until Anaheim scored the OT winner, but they were unable to hold 2-0 and 3-2 leads. In the series, Edmonton has led for 71:14, trailed for 76:19, and been tied for 94:56. Game 4 was the only game where they were able to score first and hold the lead for a significant period of time. Give Anaheim credit: they have been great all season at coming from behind, but in the regular season Edmonton won 75 per cent of the games (30-5-5) when scoring first. They had the sixth best winning percentage when scoring first, but they have dropped to 25 per cent in the playoffs. They need to do a better job of playing with a lead.

And they need to kill penalties better in the second period. Anaheim is 4-for-5 on the PP in the second period thus far. Each team has four five-on-five goals in the middle frame, and the Ducks also have a shorthanded goal. The Oilers have been outscored 9-4, but the shots are only 47-43 in favour of the Ducks. The Oilers’ inability to kill penalties, which has been an issue all season, has been magnified in this series, and especially in the second period. Kris Knoblauch and Mark Stuart need to look at other options.

Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard have been on for four of the six Ducks’ PP goals. Darnell Nurse and Connor Murphy have only been on together for one, and they are starting most penalty kills, except when Nurse is in the penalty box. Would they consider using Jake Walman and Ty Emberson on the PK? Emberson knows the system, and Walman is pretty good at blocking shots. I asked Kris Knoblauch if they are considering using those two on the PK.

“There will be a lot of mixing of defence, especially with some penalty kill rotation,” said Knoblauch. “Both of those guys (Walman and Emberson) can kill, and maybe Ekholm and Bouchard some more five-on-five time. Especially Emberson. He has been a very good penalty killer for us, and I think we will see more of Emberson killing tonight.”

I like this for a variety of reasons. It gives Bouchard more time at five-on-five and on the PP, where the odds of scoring are significantly higher, and Emberson has been pretty solid on the PK.

The other element they have to look at is altering how often their forwards are leaving the zone. Too often the Oilers blueliners have no outlet option on the boards as the forwards are near the blue line or in the neutral zone. I asked Knoblauch about their usage of the stretch pass.

“There are times to use it and times not. When you have someone stretching at least it pushes them (ANA) back. And you know whether you use them or not, it’s often, if you do make that pass, it’s can be a home run, it can be a breakaway, although that very rarely happens and usually gets broken up, and it ends up being a one man forecheck.
“It would be nice to get more guys carrying that puck up together as a group, but at this time (playoffs) everyone’s back checking so well and getting above and it’s hard making a pass to the forwards, you’ve either got a defenceman sitting on you or another forward. So sometimes, unfortunately, the only option they have is to make that long stretch pass. So yeah, we’d like to get away from it, but often it’s the only resource we have.”

We could see the Oilers carry the puck more out of the zone, but more so, I’d like to see the forwards come back deeper in their zone more often. The Oilers don’t need major tweaks, but a few minor ones will go a long way to determining if they are playing on Thursday or cleaning out their lockers.

SNAPSHOTS…

— NHL teams are 2-2 so far in the playoffs when facing elimination. Pittsburgh has won twice since going down 3-0 to Philadelphia, while Ottawa and Los Angeles both lost Game 4 and got swept by Carolina and Colorado, respectively. In the past two seasons, Edmonton is 5-3 when facing elimination. All three losses came against Florida, but so did three of their victories. The Oilers have won three games in a row against an opponent in three of their last five playoff series. It is difficult, but it can be done.

— The Oilers need to manage the puck better. Anaheim has scored nine goals within 10 seconds of a takeaway so far this series (stat courtesy of Mike Kelly from Sportlogic). They have been able to make the Oilers pay. The Oilers need to manage the puck better tonight. Two goals last game were a direct result of their inability to clear the puck.

— Here’s a comparison for shots and goals thus far in the series. Anaheim has nine high-danger goals compared to the Oilers’ six, and they’ve generated more HD shots.

The Oilers need to get to the middle of the ice more. They need more traffic in front of the net and get some rebounds, like Kapanen did on the opening goal in Game 4.

— The Ducks have seven players averaging one point/game in this series: Jackson Lacombe (eight points), Mikael Granlund (six), Alex Killorn, Troy Terry, and Leo Carlsson (five) and Cutter Gauthier and John Carlsson (four). Meanwhile, Edmonton has six players with 4+ points: Draisaitl (seven), Kapanen (five) and McDavid, Walman, Podkolzin, and RNH (four).

— Offence hasn’t been the issue for Edmonton in the series, but the Oilers could use a timely goal from one of Matt Savoie, Jack Roslovic, Trent Frederic, or Colton Dach tonight. Jeffrey Viel has two goals for the Ducks while Ryan Poehling has three.

LINEUPS…

Oilers

Podkolzin – Draisaitl – Kapanen
RNH – McDavid – Hyman
Savoie – Dickinson – Roslovic
Dach – Samanski/Lazar – Frederic

Ekholm – Bouchard
Nurse – Murphy
Walman – Emberson

Ingram

Connor Ingram starts. I thought Jarry played well, specifically on screened shots. He stopped all five screen attempts. The Ducks have scored three of those on Ingram, and they will look for more long shots with traffic. Ingram will need to get across quickly so he can look around the shortside screen.

McDavid and Jason Dickinson are listed as game-time decisions according to Knoblauch. Of course the Oilers know if they are playing, they just are keeping it quiet. I’d expect McDavid to play. Dach is feeling better and looks like he will be back in the lineup, and if Dickinson is good to go, then someone has to come out.

The Oilers need to be better defensively. Offence hasn’t been an issue. They are scoring enough to win. “I think there is a lot of room to improve,” said Kapanen. “Honestly, I don’t think we have been really even close to how we were playing at the end of the season, which was looking pretty good. At the same time there is no panic. We are a confident group, and it helps we have a lot of older guys who have been through a lot of adversity. We just need to claw back one game at a time.”

Ducks

Gauthier – Carlsson – Terry
Killorn – Granlund – Sennecke
McTavish – Poehling – Krieder
Viel – Washe – Moore

LaCombe – Trouba
Mintyukov – Carlson
Hinds – Helleson

Dostal

The Ducks are not making any changes. Quenneville is happy with how his team has played, and he’s been confident playing any line against McDavid or Draisaitl’s lines. Anaheim has yet to feel uncomfortable in this series, a credit to how they’ve played, and the Oilers need to force them to defend for longer stretches. Edmonton must match Anaheim’s intensity and win more puck battles, and they need to make smarter dump-ins. Too often they have dumped the puck with only one forward on the forecheck, and that has led to easy exits for the Ducks.