Oilers take it on the chin, literally, in another loss to Anaheim

It could have been worse, but it was bad enough.

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Already minus five injured players from what they hope will be their lineup in the playoffs, the Edmonton Oilers came close to losing two more on a night when the Anaheim Ducks played them hard and heavy in a 3-2 defeat.

Corey Perry and Vasily Podkolzin both dodged what looked like serious injuries after run-ins with Anaheim defenceman Radko Gudas, but the Oilers couldn’t escape the pain of a third loss in four meetings with the Ducks this year.

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This is a tough one because with Los Angeles losing to Utah, second place in the Pacific Division and home ice in their first round series with the Kings was still on the table.

Even without Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Mattias Ekholm, Trent Frederic and Stuart Skinner, the Oilers should have been able to find a way past a team with .494 winning percentage and six wins in its previous 16 games.

But they couldn’t. The spirit was willing, but the sticks were weak.

“It’s hard slack to pick up, two guys who are usually leading the points race in the league,” defenceman Darnell Nurse said of the Oilers being without their most prolific offensive talents. “When you generate the amount of chances we generated, on most nights guys would find ways to put a few more in but we were definitely missing that finish tonight.”

The Oilers were also missing a player because of the mounting injury total (they went 11 forwards and six defencemen) but it didn’t seem to matter much. They controlled the game all night.

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“I thought we played a pretty good game, some mistakes to give them their goals off the rush, but overall, the effort from the guys (was solid),” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “For the amount of opportunities we had, the amount of chances, we certainly deserved to have more than two goals.”

Edmonton outplayed the Ducks badly all night — the shots were a ridiculous 47-21 (including 24-8) in the third period — but the hands were stone cold on another one of those nights where the Oilers got ‘goalied.’

Anaheim keeper Lukas Dostal posted the win, while the Oilers further sunk their own cause by serving up Anaheim’s goals on a silver platter and going 0-for-6 on the power play.

Evan Bouchard’s ongoing defensive struggles led to two second-period Anaheim goals after Adam Henrique got Edmonton off to a 1-0 lead late in the first.

First, he drifted all alone into the corner when Anaheim had possession near the Edmonton blue line and was late to a rebound in front of his own net. Then, when he got there, he chopped a weak backup right up the middle to give Anaheim a second chance and a goal for Cutter Gauthier.

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Five minutes later, Gauthier blew past Bouchard like he wasn’t even there and scored upstairs on goaltender Olivier Rodrigue — an easy and uncontested drive to the net that put the Oilers behind 2-1.

From there, the Ducks went up 3-1 when Mason McTavish stripped Kasperi Kapanen at the Anaheim blue line for a long breakaway with 15 minutes left in the third period.

Jeff Skinner closed it to 3-2 with 3:31 to play, but that was as close as the Oilers got. After a 2-0 start to their road trip, they return home 2-2, tied for sixth in the Western Conference, and still haven’t officially clinched a playoff spot with five games left in the season.

“We’re disappointed,” said Knoblauch. “Tonight’s game felt like one we should have won. The effort was there and I thought we deserved a better fate.

Rodrigue made his first career NHL start in goal for the Oilers and stopped 18 of 21 shots before getting pulled for the extra attacker.

The game heated up in the second period after referees Kendrick Nicholson and Michael Markovic, who had a miserable night all around, somehow both missed a vicious head shot from Gudas on Perry midway through the second period that knocked the Edmonton veteran from the game for a few minutes.

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Gudas will be getting a suspension, but he didn’t get a minor penalty.

Not long after that, Podkolzin had to be helped off the ice in the second period after his leg buckled under him in a gruesome-looking incident after he got tangled up with Gudas in front of the net. It looked horrible, but he was back for the third period.

Gudas had his way with the Oilers most of the night, throwing gloved shots and forearms anytime he felt like it, but Edmonton chose to let it go and focus on the scoreboard, only to fall one goal short.

“I thought we dug in and tried to get physical,” said Nurse. “That’s his game. Sometimes things happen out there and people can choose to answer or not. I thought our response was pretty good.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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