Saturday, 03.28.2009 / 1:57 AM / Roundup

By John Kreiser - NHL.com Columnist



The Oilers came to Honda Center on Friday with a three-game losing streak. They left in sole possession of seventh place in the Western Conference thanks to a 51-save performance by Roloson in a 5-3 victory over the Anaheim Ducks.

Anaheim outshot Edmonton 54-20 -- including 24-3 in the third period -- but couldn't get enough pucks past Roloson to keep from dropping out of the top eight in the Western scramble. The seventh-place Oilers now have 81 points, one more than Nashville and Anaheim -- but the Predators have played one fewer game, putting them in eighth.

Roloson was the only reason the Oilers escaped victorious one night after a 3-2 loss at Phoenix.

"That was incredible goaltending by Rollie," coach Craig MacTavish said. "It was a crazy game. We were a tired group of battlers. We battled hard and relied on some spectacular goaltending."

The Ducks would have settled for merely good goaltending. Coach Randy Carlyle twice pulled Jean-Sebastien Giguere -- the first time after he gave up two goals on the Oilers' first two shots, and the second after he allowed two goals in nine seconds in the second period.

"We gave up four goals and we didn’t really give up a lot the rest of the way, but that is enough to win," Carlyle said. "You can’t be happy when you give up four goals and lose an important game like this."





Ex-Duck Dustin Penner and Fernando Pisani scored 37 seconds apart to give the Oilers a 2-0 lead 1:48 into the game. After the second of Ryan Getzlaf's two goals tied the game 15 seconds into the middle period, Penner scored his second of the game and 17th of the season with a shot from near the right post at 2:40 of the second. Kyle Brodziak followed with a 35-foot slap shot from the slot that sailed past Giguere, who was screened on the play, giving Edmonton a 4-2 lead at 2:49 and sending Giguere to the bench for good.

Corey Perry cut the lead to 4-3 at 3:25 of the third period when he skated across the slot before beating Roloson with a wrist shot. But the Ducks couldn’t get the equalizer despite their barrage of shots at Roloson, who sometimes looked like he was playing 1-on-5.

However, Roloson said he was getting a lot of help.

"Our guys played great defensively," he said. "They allowed me to see most of the pucks, and tonight we were able to capitalize on some of our chances."

Ales Kotalik's empty-netter with 11.6 seconds left sent the crowd to the exits and the Ducks to the showers without two points despite taking 93 shots at goal to just 30 for the Oilers.

"Our effort was there," Carlyle said. "Obviously, we could have executed better. The situation is we played our hearts out. There was no shortage of work ethic. These are ones where you have to pump people up because you get down when you work and you don’t get the result. Tonight was one of those nights."

The Ducks have to make sure there's no hangover from this one when they host Colorado on Sunday.

"When we leave the rink tonight, we've got to put it out of our mind, make sure we come tomorrow ready to work and prepare for Colorado," defenseman Chris Pronger said. "We did a lot of good things, had a lot of good chances. Unfortunately, we weren't able to capitalize on a lot of those chances."