GAME RECAP: Oilers 4, Ducks 3 (Game 1)

EDMONTON, AB – Who's quacking now?

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 goal of the game before Kapanen followed suit to deliver the game-winner with under two minutes remaining to overturn the Ducks' lead after they erased Edmonton's first-period tallies with 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 producing two assists in the victory in his first game since Mar. 15 after missing the last 14 games of the regular season due to injury.

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 the Ducks.

Goaltender Connor Ingram made 25 saves on 28 shots for his first-career playoff victory.

The Oilers & Ducks will be back in action to continue their first-round series with Game 2 on Wednesday back at Rogers Place.

FIRST PERIOD

Playoff hockey is BACK in Oil Country, and what a reintroduction it was – especially for two impact returnees for the Oilers who had a big hand in their strong start in Game 1.

With the start of another run at the Stanley Cup, the Oilers flipped the switch to playoff mode and dominated the opening frame against the Ducks, outshooting them 13-4 and leading 2-0 through 20 minutes behind the energy of a rocking Rogers Place on Monday.

"It was amazing," Dickinson said. "I had to take a couple of deep breaths during the anthem to centre myself and come back down to earth, because the adrenaline was just pumping and you're feeling every bit of energy in that arena."

There were big cheers for Draisaitl stepping onto the ice for warmups after being activated off LTIR earlier in the evening to return from his 14-game absence to end the regular season, and the German didn't look like he missed a beat when his first puck touch saw him set up Jake Walman for an open slap shot from the top of the circle.

"I felt okay," Draisaitl said. "Certainly going to take a couple of games to really be myself and really trust myself again, but for a start, I thought it was okay."

Vasily Podkolzin came close to breaking the early deadlock on a breakaway created by Walman flipping the puck 100 feet into the neutral zone, but Lukas Dostal did enough to get his left toe after the Russian tried to slide it back across the Ducks' netminder.

The Ducks had their best chances midway through the frame, where they had a goal waved off for goaltender interference before Leo Carlsson cut inside and lost the handle on the puck before he could slide it inside the near post on Connor Ingram.

With all the pre-game talk about Draisaitl's return, it was all too quiet on the Dickinson front after the centre fought hard to get back into the lineup and blow the roof off Rogers Place for the first time this playoffs with the opening goal on a breakaway.

"He was amazing," Draisaitl said. "I think he's been waiting to playoff hockey for a long time now, a couple years, so it's exciting. Guys like that are invaluable to a team, and we're really happy for him. Obviously, a great night for him."

Walman fired a blueline-to-blueline dart onto the tape of Dickinson to send him in alone to dangle Dostal and fire the opening goal of the playoffs into the open net for the 1-0 advantage with 2:39 on the clock in the first period.

Dickinson missed the last four games of the regular season for the Oilers, but was back with a bang to open the scoring with his first playoff goal since Sept. 23, 2020, in his postseason appearance since the 2019-20 season as a member of the Dallas Stars.

"I just had to get my strength back into me and just work towards being able to play," Dickinson said of his recovery. "That was obviously the first step, being able to make sure that I was strong enough to battle and then to play like that. The results are because of my process and just keeping it simple, going to the net where good things happen.  That's really all it was. I just moved my legs and let the game come to me."

The Oilers weren't done before the intermission and doubled their lead exactly a minute later when Draisaitl got on the scoresheet by finding Kasperi Kapanen wide open in the slot after some hard work by Podkolzin to win a race to the puck in the neutral zone.

After the Ducks escaped pressure in their own zone, Podkolzin was quick in pursuit of the puck in a battle with Pavel Mintyukov at the blueline to work the puck loose to Draisaitl in an odd-man scenario with Kapanen, who followed up his first shot with two whacks at a rebound that he put past Dostal for his ninth career playoff goal.

"When you have somebody like Leon settled back in the lineup and you get to play with him, good things usually happen," Kapanen said. "I think on both those goals, just good plays from Podz and Leo, so I was just happy to capitalize on them."

SECOND PERIOD

You can't let off for a moment against this young & exciting Ducks squad, who handed the Oilers their first deficit and adversity of the playoffs with a three-goal second period.

Everything stellar about Edmonton's opening period was quickly undone in the first five minutes of the second, where the Ducks tied things up on tallies from Troy Terry and Leo Carlsson before taking their first lead of the series off Terry's second goal that arrived half a period later courtesy of Anaheim's 1-for-2 man advantage.

"Just not our game," Draisaitl said. "Too many turnovers. Not hard enough on pucks, and then sometimes, it's just about simplifying a little bit. I thought we did a decent job after that."

The Ducks delivered only 19 seconds into the stanza on an easy rebound finish for Terry, putting away Carlsson's low effort off the pad of Ingram off a strong early zone entry by Anaheim defenceman Jackson LaCombe carrying over the blueline.

It was a similar scenario 4:19 later, when a rimmed puck from the Ducks found its way into the middle off the stick of Evan Bouchard to create another dangerous look for Terry that ended with Carlsson banging home the rebound from the same spot to make it 2-2.

Even with the return of Draisaitl helping its cause, Edmonton's power play went 0-for-2 in the frame before the Ducks found a way to capitalize on their second opportunity with the man advantage when Darnell Nurse was guilty of a cross-check into the face of Mason McTavish after the whistle.

"Not our best, not our sharpest, but there's a couple of looks there where if I didn't miss a couple of weeks, I'd have been much cleaner on those," Draisaitl said. "So certainly, we'll chip away at it and better next game.

Terry earned his second goal right quickly off the faceoff with a shot from the left circle through traffic that beat Ingram blocker side, completing the comeback for the Ducks to take a 3-2 lead on the Oilers after two periods in Game 1.

"They're skilled.  We knew that they could score, and they're good off the rush," Draisaitl added. "They can all skate. It's a good hockey team. Not much else to say.  They're a good team and it was two good teams going at it, so we'll take it from here."

THIRD PERIOD

With only two directions to go after the Ducks' three-goal second period, the Oilers took the path to victory after Dickinson and Kapanen led the charge in a heroic third-period comeback, sealing a come-from-behind Game 1 victory in dramatic fashion.

On a night when none of the Oilers' big guns found the back of the net, it took a big performance from a pair of their secondary scorers in Dickinson and Kapanen to bring it back to equal footing with under nine minutes left before the signature moment in Game 1 arrived off the stick of Kapanen with 1:54 remaining in regulation.

"It's everything this time of year," Draisaitl said of the team's depth. "Your top players have to be your top players, but you're not going anywhere if you don't have guys like that chipping in. We don't expect two goals from guys like that every night, of course, but you need that, and both of them played a heck of a game."

Amidst all the heroics in the third period from the Oilers, it was Ingram who was up to the task in keeping the Oilers within striking distance by coming down with an important save on Beckett Sennecke's breakaway before Dickinson was able to start the late rally.

Playing in his first-ever playoff game in Blue & Orange, Dickinson made the most of the moment by equalizing with his second tally of the night with 8:30 to go in regulation, after Ekholm took advantage of a blown tire from Radko Gudas off the rush to deliver a bomb from the circle that was finished on the rebound by Dickinson to make it 3-3.

That equalizer could've amounted to nothing if Ingram didn't make a vital intervention on an open look for Carlsson on a two-on-one with under five minutes left, standing up the young forward's clear-cut chance with a right shoulder to allow the Oilers to push ahead for the go-ahead goal.

"Really good," Draisaitl said of Ingram. "Huge stop there in the third on that two-on-one. That's the game pretty much, so he gave us a chance and was big."

With momentum on their side, Kapanen played hero for the Oilers with 1:54 to go in regulation after the second line's hard cycle below Anaheim's goal line opened up space for Podkolzin to find his Finnish linemate alone in front.

After a marauding rush from Draisaitl, the German put the puck down low to Podkolzin before he picked out a wide-open Kapanen in front to slide home his second goal of the contest & the game-winner under the left pad of Dostal with under two minutes left.

Kapanen now has eight points in the 13 career postseason games for the Oilers, including the game-winners tonight and the clinching goal in Game 5 of last season's second-round series win over the Golden Knights.

The Ducks had one great opportunity to equalize with the net empty, as a puck went perilously into the crease before Terry's effort was crucially cleared by Bouchard, sending it away from harm before being cleared with 12 seconds remaining.

"That's a game-saver," Ingram said.

After earning his 50th career win and 100th NHL appearance in the regular season, Ingram's 11 saves in the third and 25 on the night helped the 29-year-old from Imperial, SK secure his first-ever playoff victory.

"It took me four tries, but I'll take it," he said. "It means a lot.  It's been cool.  It's been a wild year. These are small accomplishments along the way, and it's been fun and it's exciting to do it here."