LAS VEGAS — It’s been a season in which the Ducks have met every challenge, cleared every hurdle and climbed every hill. But on Thursday they’ll be standing at the base of a very large mountain, the last thing separating them from the start of a very long summer.
After a 3-2 overtime loss Tuesday in Game 5 of their best-of-seven Stanley Cup playoff series with the Vegas Golden Knights, Anaheim needs a win at home in Game 6 to avoid elimination. If its gets that, it will need another victory over the weekend in Vegas to advance to the next round.
And if you think the young, overachieving Ducklings are quaking at those prospects, then you really haven’t been paying attention. What they’re saying instead is “bring it on!”
“We just want to get back out there already. I’m kind of excited to see what everybody’s going to bring. We’ve got a lot of confidence,” winger Mason McTavish of a team that had 26 comeback wins this season, then did it three more times in the playoffs.
“We’ve come back a lot all year,” McTavish continued. “A lot of guys are just excited to play.”
“Everyone knows it’s an elimination game,” added Cutter Gauthier who, like McTavish, his linemate, had two assists Tuesday. “But it’s not something that’s really talked about or said. Everyone knows it, and everyone’s going to give just a little bit extra to try to get the win and force a Game 7.
“So I got a confidence in the group that we’ll get that job done.”
The Ducks probably shouldn’t even be here, much less filled with such confidence going forward. The team hadn’t been in the postseason since 2018 and 14 of its players had never been in a Stanley Cup playoff game until last month, among them Tuesday’s two goal-scorers, 20-year-old Beckett Sennecke and 22-year-old Olen Zellweger.
Some of the Golden Knights have hockey sticks older than that.
This year was simply supposed to be about getting to the postseason, not necessarily winning once they got there. So in Vegas, the thinking goes, the Ducks were playing with house money.
Just don’t tell them that.
Ducks defenseman Olen Zellweger (51) celebrates with center Mason McTavish (23) after scoring during the third period of Game 5 of a their playoff series against the Golden Knights Tuesday in Las Vegas.
(Candice Ward / Associated Press)
We’ve got “a ton of confidence,” Zellweger said. “I know this group is going to bounce back like we have all playoffs. We’re gonna take a few lessons from this one, obviously, and then get ready to go.”
The Ducks took the lead midway through the first period Tuesday on Sennecke’s second power-play goal in as many games. But the score was a costly one since the penalty that sent up the goal — a vicious hit from defenseman Brayden McNabb — knocked Ducks forward Ryan Poehling out of the game.
Vegas evened things less than four minutes later when Pavel Dorofeyev scored on the Golden Knights’ only power play of the night. Dorofeyev would also be forced out of the game for a while and being drilled by a Jackson LaCombe slap shot early in the second period. But he would return to score the game-winner 4:10 into overtime after Zellweger and Vegas’ Tomas Hertl exchanged goals in the third period.
Dorofeyev ended the longest game of the series by batting the rebound of a Jack Eichel shot out of the air and just inside the left post. The assist was Eichel’s second of the night and league-leading 14th of the playoffs.
“It’s a definitely a big letdown. Certainly there’ll be some games in the playoffs, at the end of the game, your stomach feels like it’s rotten,” said Ducks coach Joel Quenneville, who has coached in — and won — more Stanley Cup playoff games than any active NHL coach.
Maybe. But Quenneville also said his young Ducks don’t know what they don’t know. And what they don’t know now is that they’re supposed to nervous and tense heading into Thursday’s game.
Instead, they’re looking at it as just another hill to climb.
“Our guys are going to be excited about it. It’s a fun opportunity,” he said. “You know, we’ve got no pressure. We’ve got to come out play hard, simple; at home, get excited about the home crowd.
“So that’s our mindset. A lot of younger guys, they’ve been fine the whole playoffs and nothing seems to change their demeanor or their approach.”
There’s no reason why that should stop now.
