Oilers bury Ducks, 7-1, setting up another decisive Game 7 in Anaheim

Reporting from EDMONTON, Canada —  Edmonton’s second-round playoff series with the Ducks has mostly been a string of bad bounces and bad breaks for the young Oilers, 11 of whom are playing in the postseason for the first time.

They led in four of the first five games, only to let the lead get away three times. Twice they lost in overtime — including a Game 5 defeat Friday in which they squandered a 3-0 lead in the last 3:16 of regulation.

So on Sunday they took their frustrations out by pounding the Ducks 7-1, with Leon Draisaitl picking up three goals and two assists in a game that was all but over just a few minutes after the opening faceoff. And with that the Oilers sent the series back to Anaheim for a decisive Game 7 Wednesday, a scenario the Ducks dearly wanted to avoid.

“Our season was on the line. And we played like it,” said Mark Letestu, who had two goals and two assists. “If you ask me, I thought it was a desperate group.”

That desperation now swings to the Ducks, who, four times in the last four years, have taken a lead into the sixth game of a playoff series on the road. Each time they lost that game, and the following one at home.

Sunday’s rout leaves them reading from the same depressing script.

If Ducks had been dreading a Game 7, though, the Oilers — 20 of whom were in grade school the last time Edmonton made the playoffs — are embracing it, since it means their magical mystery tour through the postseason isn’t over yet.

“They just come and play,” Edmonton coach Todd McLellan said of his players, some of whom are apparently too young to grow a playoff beard. “There’s a little bit of an innocence to a lot of them. They show up and battle.”

They battled so hard Sunday that 12 Oilers had either a goal or an assist — and none of them were named Connor McDavid, the Edmonton captain and Hart Trophy finalist who led the NHL with 100 points during the regular season.

Instead it was Draisaitl, moved to the middle of the ice to center Edmonton’s second line, who did the bulk of the heavy lifting, scoring twice and assisting on another goal in a decisive first period that saw the Oilers grab a 5-0 lead.

“That sent the tone for the whole night,” Draisaitl said. “We all had to step it up a notch.”

Added Draisaitl’s linemate Milan Lucic, who had two assists: “It was the start that we wanted. What we experienced in Game 4 and 5, with two comebacks by them, we knew we had to keep our foot on the gas.”

Draisaitl’s first two goals came in the first 7½ minutes, so when Zack Kassian scored on a breakaway 63 seconds later, Ducks coach Randy Carlyle gave goalie John Gibson the rest of the night off.

“I need to come up with a couple of saves and maybe it’s different, maybe it’s not,” Gibson said. “As it went on they kind of took it to us. It wasn’t our best. Pretty simple.”

Backup Jonathan Bernier was no better, though, allowing Letestu’s two scores — the second on a power play — in the first period and goals to Anton Slepyshev and Draisaitl in the second. Draisaitl’s final score, also on a power play, made him the first Oiler with five points in a playoff game since 1990, five years before he was born.

The Ducks managed a brief murmur of protest midway through the second period when Rickard Rakell’s sixth goal of the postseason spoiled the shutout bid for Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot. The Ducks’ frustration then boiled over in the closing minutes when four players —– Ryan Kesler and Josh Manson and Edmonton’s Lucic and Patrick Maroon — were given 10-minute misconducts after an on-ice brawl.

Yet that did nothing to alter the fact that the Oilers were able to stay alive and force the series to a seventh game.

“You never know what happens in [a] Game 7,” McDavid said cheerfully.

Actually the Ducks do. And for the last four years, at least, they haven’t liked the ending.

KEYS TO GAME 6

1. The Ducks got off to an abysmal start that no rally could erase. Edmonton scored three times in its first six shots, all of which went through goalie John Gibson’s five-hole. He was clearly off and was removed a little more than eight minutes into the game.

2. Leon Draisaitl continued to torture the Ducks. The German forward got a hat trick and has 21 points in 11 games against the Ducks this season. He is the first Oilers player to score three goals in a playoff game since 2000.

3. Penalty killing continues to be a problem for the Ducks. The outcome was long decided but the Ducks allowed two power-play goals. Their penalty-killing unit is 18 for 25 in the series.

— Curtis Zupke

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

Twitter: kbaxter11