While hockey fans at large are breathing a sigh of relief to not have to see a first-round series between Edmonton and Los Angeles for a fifth straight season, we can’t help but wonder if that would have been the easier matchup than the one the Oilers ended up with.

The Anaheim Ducks have been rebuilding for years and are just now getting back into the playoffs led by the young group of players they’ve been developing. The front office has done well to surround those early-20s players with many veterans, and Joel Quenneville’s coaching has turned Anaheim into one of the more dynamic offences in the league, and the Ducks into a team you want to watch play.

Maybe it’s still early in Anaheim’s timeline for them to pull out an upset of such a significant Stanley Cup contender, but they won’t be a pushover either. In some ways, this version of the Ducks is a reminder of what the Oilers used to be the last time these two teams met in the playoffs.

In 2017 the Ducks won the regular season Pacific Division title, and in Round 2 knocked out Edmonton, the Pacific’s runner-up, in a tense seven-game series. At the time the Ducks still had championship hopes and were still led by the old core of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. The Oilers, on the other hand, had sophomore Connor McDavid and third-year NHLer Leon Draisaitl leading them.

Now the Oilers are the older team in a must-win mentality, while the young Ducks have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Here’s how their first-round series breaks down.

Edmonton: 2-1-0
Anaheim: 1-2-0

Oilers X-Factor: When will Leon Draisaitl be ready?

With two of the NHL’s top five players on their roster, the Oilers have been carried by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. In the past two playoffs, Draisaitl’s 64 points in 47 post-season games is second only to McDavid’s 75, but the German has been Edmonton’s top producer on the power play in that time. In last year’s final, Draisaitl was Edmonton’s leader in points (8) and goals (4) in the six-game defeat.

But his availability for the start of this year’s playoffs is still, as of this writing, a mystery. Draisaitl missed the last 14 games of Edmonton’s regular season (they went 8-4-2 without him, 3-3-2 against playoff teams) and though he has been on the ice skating again, coach Kris Knoblauch still called him “day-to-day” but that he anticipated Draisaitl joining them some time in Round 1.

One of the biggest challenges Edmonton has had with getting through the playoffs and, especially, against the Panthers the past two years, was finding enough scoring from the rest of the forward group. The big two forwards can be counted on for their individual contributions, and they tend to also help their line mates produce as well. But past that, depth scoring has been a challenge.

Without Draisaitl, that reliable depth gets a little thinner and will put more pressure on his line mates to produce without him. If he returns for Game 1 this might be a non-issue — though we’ll see how banged up he still might be — but the longer this series goes without Draisaitl, the more of an advantage it could be for the Ducks.

Ducks X-Factor: Will size play a difference?

Yes, the Ducks have a disadvantage when it comes to experience as a unit compared to the Oilers. This is a team that hasn’t played a post-season game since 2018 and they have a very young core group — none of their top five scorers have a single game of playoff experience.

But this is a team that won’t get pushed around. There are some very physical veteran players here, from Chris Kreider to Alex Killorn, Jacob Trouba and Radko Gudas, but even their younger players have a lot of mass. Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson and Beckett Sennecke are all six-foot-two or six-foot-three and will be a handful. As a team, the Ducks were the second-heaviest group in the NHL this season, and 10th in average height.

They play very fast and frantic hockey, which lends itself to a “fun-to-watch” offensive style, but the size they have allows them to get through to the hard areas of the ice for scoring chances, a key component to playoff success. At five-on-five this season, the Ducks created the fourth-most high danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick.

In talking with our scout Jason Bukala, he believes this size factor could be a potentially dangerous one for the Oilers to handle in this series. While Anaheim’s loose defence might be exposed by Edmonton’s offence, the Ducks might have the bodies to wear down the Oilers, too. Sennecke, Gauthier and Carlsson lead a young, big and strong group of power forward types, and they’ll be hungry to establish themselves on the playoff stage.

ADVANCED STATS
(five-on-five totals from Natural Stat Trick)

1. Is Connor Ingram going to deliver consistent, No. 1 goalie performances?

Stuart Skinner got the lion’s share of starts in the past two years as Edmonton went to back-to-back finals, but he was also inconsistent and had to be spelled by backup Calvin Pickard more times than the Oilers would have preferred. GM Stan Bowman looked at upgrading the position last summer and couldn’t find anything, but the one small move (at the time) he did make was to acquire Connor Ingram from Utah in a salary dump.

Ingram was not in the plans at the start of the season, beginning in the AHL as the organization’s third-stringer. He was still not in the plans when Edmonton traded away Skinner and acquired Tristan Jarry to be his replacement. But an injury to Jarry first opened up an opportunity for Ingram in December and January, and Jarry’s on-ice struggles afterwards put Ingram in a position to take the No. 1 job. By the time the Olympic break had ended, Ingram was atop the depth chart.

So, this is where we are. Edmonton’s pre-season third-string goalie is now their playoff No. 1. Ingram has a .901 save percentage since late February with a 2.55 GAA and in his last seven regular season starts he allowed more than two goals against just once. Ingram’s only playoff experience was with the Predators in 2022 in the “waste of seven days” series against Colorado in which he went 0-3 in three starts.

Can he help the Oilers finish what Skinner couldn’t?

2. Could Evan Bouchard win the Norris and Conn Smythe?

Evan Bouchard has been a beast of a playoff player for the Oilers the past two springs. In 2024 his 26 assists set a new record for a defenceman in a single playoff run, and he was second among all scorers with 32 points. Last season he was again better than a point per game player in the post-season. Now we expect him to have a monster playoff again.

This regular season Bouchard led all NHL defenceman with 95 points, finishing 14 points clear of No. 2 Zach Werenski. That will certainly put Bouchard in consideration for the Norris Trophy, which is full of great candidates this year. Voting on that award will be completed before the playoffs start.

If Edmonton does make it to a third straight Stanley Cup Final, Bouchard will have to be a big part of that, and we could be talking about him as a Conn Smythe candidate two months from now. Could he become the fourth defenceman to win the Norris and Conn Smythe in the same season?

3. Connor McDavid’s legacy and Oilers future

Edmonton’s captain has made it clear what his desires are, and it’s pretty simple: he wants to be winning Stanley Cups. He and the Oilers nearly did that in 2024 and 2025, but now have to start that demanding journey all over again and if they don’t get all the way through this time, the clock will be ticking on his contract, and the questions will be asked all over again: Does he think he can win in Edmonton, and will he stick around past the end of his current contract?

McDavid is currently in the last year of his eight-year contract, but signed a two-year extension in October that could keep him in place through the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons. But there is no guarantee he’ll make it through that. While Edmonton has been oh so close to winning, if there are steps back this season and next, the Oilers might have to begin thinking about an exit plan. That would be the underlying concern here.

But, let’s not worry for now. While the regular season had its ups and downs and the path through the Western Conference is not so easy, the Oilers can at least know the team that beat them in the past two finals will not be waiting for them again in 2026. Edmonton seemed to be getting better all-around play as the regular season wound down and might be hitting their peak at the right time. McDavid will be as motivated as ever with how close he’s come two years in a row, and with Olympic disappointment fresh in his mind. Could we be about to experience an all-time playoff from this generation’s greatest player, and at the end of it will Edmonton be celebrating his crowning moment?

1. Can Lukas Dostal steal a series?

There is going to be a lot of pressure on Anaheim’s goalie in this series. Not only are the defensively-loose Ducks running against a good five-on-five offence, they’re also facing the league’s best power play. In all situations this season, the Ducks ranked 29th in expected goals against and 27th in high danger chances allowed, per Natural Stat Trick. While Dostal does have the potential to steal games, can he steal an entire series against such a polished opponent?

In his last six regular-season starts Dostal allowed 23 goals and had an .836 save percentage — and only one of those opponents was a playoff team. This will also be his first taste of Stanley Cup Playoffs action.

2. Is special teams going to be too much of a problem?

Keying in further on the Ducks’ penalty kill vs. Edmonton’s power play, this could be a real sore spot for Anaheim as they had the third-worst PK among all playoff teams. Meantime, Edmonton became just the second team since 1980 to finish a regular season with a power-play percentage of at least 30. The only other team to do it in that time? The 2022-23 Oilers, whose 32.4 per cent success rate set a new all-time record.

The Ducks like to play with some edge, too, but that can come at a cost. Only three other NHL teams were shorthanded more times than the Ducks this season and while playing on that line is welcomed in the playoffs, crossing it too many times could undo Anaheim in this matchup.

3. The Radko Gudas effect

In the headlines for two injury-inducing hits this season — one on Sidney Crosby at the Olympics, and one that ended Auston Matthews’ season in NHL play — Gudas is a player to take note of when he’s on the ice. In the playoffs, he might get away with a little more than in the regular season, and even if it came to another suspension, those also tend to be shorter in the playoffs. But he doesn’t need to go that far to have an impact.

Gudas will be noticeably physical and one knock could turn this series on a dime. Will he be a major storyline in this series, or can the Oilers work around him enough to nullify his impact?