Ducks confident they can rally after losing to Vegas in Game 5

LAS VEGAS — It was a season in which the Ducks faced every challenge, over every obstacle and climbed every hill. But on Thursday, they will find themselves at the foot of a very large mountain, the last thing that separates 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 against the Vegas Golden Knights, Anaheim needs a home win in Game 6 to avoid elimination. If he succeeds, he will need another victory on Saturday in Vegas to advance to the next round.

And if you think overachieving young ducklings are cowering at these prospects, then you really haven’t been paying attention. What they say instead is “Go for it!” »

“We just want to get back there already. I’m pretty excited to see what everyone is going to bring. We have a lot of confidence,” winger Mason McTavish of a team that won 26 times this season, then did it three more times in the playoffs.

“We came back a lot throughout the year,” McTavish continued. “A lot of guys are just excited to play.”

“Everyone knows it’s a playoff game,” added Cutter Gauthier who, like McTavish, his teammate, collected two assists on Tuesday. “But it’s not something that’s really talked about or said. Everyone knows it, and everyone is going to give just a little extra to try to get the win and force a Game 7.

“So I have confidence in the group that we will get this job done.”

The Ducks probably shouldn’t even be here, let alone filled with this much confidence going forward. The team hadn’t made the playoffs since 2018 and 14 of its players had never appeared in a Stanley Cup playoff game until last month, including Tuesday’s two scorers, 20-year-old Beckett Sennecke and 22-year-old Olen Zellweger.

Some Golden Knights have hockey sticks older than that.

This year was just supposed to be about making the playoffs, not necessarily about winning once you got there. So in Vegas, it is believed, the Ducks were playing with house money.

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 their playoff series against the Golden Knights on Tuesday in Las Vegas.

(Candice Ward/Associated Press)

We have “a ton of confidence,” Zellweger said. “I know this group is going to bounce back like we have all playoffs. We’re obviously going to learn some lessons from this one and then get ready to go.”

The Ducks took the lead midway through the first period on Tuesday, thanks to Sennecke’s second power play goal in as many games. But the score was costly as the goal-enhancing penalty — a vicious hit by defenseman Brayden McNabb — knocked Ducks forward Ryan Poehling out of the game. McNabb was suspended for Game 6 after a disciplinary hearing with the NHL on Wednesday afternoon.

Vegas tied things up less than four minutes later when Pavel Dorofeyev scored on the Golden Knights’ only power play of the night. Dorofeyev was also forced out of the game for a time and was drilled by a Jackson LaCombe slap shot early in the second period. But he would come back to score the game-winner 4:10 into overtime after Zellweger and Vegas’ Tomas Hertl traded goals in the third period.

Dorofeyev ended the longest game of the series by firing a pass from Jack Eichel just inside the left post. The assist was Eichel’s second of the night and league-leading 14th of the playoffs.

“It’s definitely a big disappointment. There are definitely going to be playoff games, at the end of the game you feel like your stomach is rotten,” said Ducks coach Joel Quenneville, who has coached – 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 are supposed to be nervous and tense before Thursday’s game.

Instead, they view it as just another hill to climb.

“Our guys are going to be excited. It’s a fun opportunity,” he said. “You know, we have no pressure. We just have to play hard; at home, be excited by the home crowd.

“So that’s our mindset. A lot of young guys have performed well throughout the playoffs and nothing seems to change their behavior or their approach.”

There is no reason for this to stop now.