NHL adds Oilers, Ducks
- The NHL playoff schedule continued Monday with the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks joining the first round. - Teams such as the Dallas Stars, Pittsburgh Penguins and Ottawa Senators opened on the wrong side and face pressure to even their series. - ESPN rolled out a top‑50 playoff players list led by names like MacKinnon, McDavid, Crosby and Kucherov alongside the daily previews (espn.com) (espn.com).
The National Hockey League’s first round reaches a full 16-team bracket Monday night, when the Edmonton Oilers host the Anaheim Ducks in Game 1 at Rogers Place. (nhl.com) The league’s opening round began Saturday, April 18, and by Monday several series already had a 1-0 edge, including Buffalo over Boston, Montreal over Tampa Bay and Carolina over Ottawa. Ottawa was back on the ice Monday for Game 2 in Raleigh, trying to avoid a 2-0 deficit after a 2-0 loss in Game 1. (nhl.com) Edmonton and Anaheim were the last first-round matchup to start. The Ducks finished third in the Pacific Division at 43-33-6 for 92 points, one point behind the second-place Oilers at 41-30-11 and 93 points. (nhl.com) That pairing puts a recent Western Conference regular against a team returning after a long gap. Edmonton is in the playoffs for a seventh straight season and is trying to get back to the Stanley Cup Final after losses there in 2024 and 2025, while Anaheim is playing its first postseason series since 2018. (nhl.com) The matchup also revives a playoff history that has been quiet for nearly a decade. Anaheim beat Edmonton in seven games in the 2017 second round, and the Ducks have not played a postseason game since their 2018 first-round sweep by San Jose. (nhl.com) Anaheim arrives with a young scoring core. Cutter Gauthier, 22, led the Ducks with 69 points and 41 goals in 76 games, Leo Carlsson, 21, had 67 points in 70 games, and rookie Beckett Sennecke, 20, posted 60 points in 82 games. (nhl.com) Edmonton still runs through Connor McDavid, who led the National Hockey League with 138 regular-season points and finished third in goals with 48. The Oilers won two of the three regular-season meetings with Anaheim, taking both games in Edmonton. (espn.com, nhl.com) ESPN used Monday’s playoff slate to frame the field around star power as much as standings. Its top-50 playoff players list ranked Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon first, ahead of McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Nikita Kucherov, using a three-year performance model built on Goals Above Replacement. (espn.com) That list landed as the bracket opened without a defending champion in it. Florida, which won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025, missed the playoffs, leaving the 2026 field guaranteed to produce a new champion for the first time since 2023. (espn.com) Monday’s games do not decide any series, but they do set the next pressure points. By the end of the night, Edmonton and Anaheim will finally have opened their matchup, and clubs that lost early — including Ottawa, with Dallas and Pittsburgh also flagged by ESPN’s daily preview — will be chasing a split instead of a hole. (msn.com, nhl.com)
