Oilers vs. Ducks: Evan Bouchard's Historic Start Fuels a Five-Goal Second Period in Anaheim

For 20 minutes on Wednesday night, the Anaheim Ducks were faster, hungrier and up two goals on an Edmonton team that had scored 17 goals in its first three games. Then the Edmonton Oilers came out of the locker room and turned the second period into a 20-minute highlight package.

Evan Bouchard scored twice and added an assist, Leon Draisaitl handed out four helpers, Connor McDavid had a goal and two assists, and the Oilers erased a 2-0 deficit with five unanswered second-period goals to beat the Ducks 5-2 at Honda Center. Edmonton has now won three straight, and Bouchard's goal pace has exactly one precedent among NHL defensemen, dating to the league's very first season.

Anaheim Owns the First, Edmonton Owns Everything After

The Ducks came out flying. Beckett Sennecke jammed a puck through Devon Levi from in tight on the power play at 4:11, then got his stick on a Leo Carlsson feed from behind the goal line and tipped it five-hole on another man advantage at 15:28. Per the AP, Sennecke scored one power-play goal in 82 games as a rookie. He had two in the first period here.

Draisaitl admitted Edmonton was a step behind early.

"They were a little quicker to pucks in the first period," Draisaitl said. "Those little one-on-ones around the wall, we kept losing them."

Whatever happened at intermission worked. Mattias Ekholm described the room's mood with some delightfully dark humor.

"After the first, we're like, 'You know what, what could possibly go more wrong, so just go out there and start working,' and we did," Ekholm said.

Eleven seconds into the second period, Bouchard sent a long shot from the right point through traffic and past Lukas Dostal to make it 2-1. At 6:30, Kasperi Kapanen one-timed a McDavid feed from the bottom of the left circle on the power play to tie it, and the goal was the 100th of his NHL career.

At 14:12, Bouchard struck again, hammering a slap shot from above the circles off a Draisaitl setup for a 3-2 lead. Two and a half minutes later, Draisaitl sprung Vasily Podkolzin behind the Anaheim defense with a stretch pass, and Podkolzin finished the breakaway for 4-2. With the teams playing 4-on-4, McDavid did McDavid things, attacking with speed and threading a shot five-hole on Dostal with 52 seconds left in the period for 5-2.

That was the night for Dostal, who stopped 12 of 17 shots before Ville Husso took over in the third and made two saves.

Bouchard Is Writing History in Real Time

Bouchard's two goals gave him a league-leading six in four games. According to the AP, that makes him only the second defenseman in NHL history with at least six goals through the first four games of a season. The only other one is Harry Cameron, who scored eight in four games for the Toronto Arenas in 1917-18, the NHL's inaugural season.

His three points pushed him to double digits as well. NHL.com noted he joined Pat Stapleton, Harry Cameron, Morgan Rielly and Bobby Orr as the only NHL defensemen to reach 10 points in four games or fewer. His 82 career goals now rank third among Oilers defensemen, behind Paul Coffey (209) and Darnell Nurse (88).

When a guy's closest comparisons are Bobby Orr and someone who played in 1917, you are no longer talking about a hot start. You are talking about a trivia question.

Draisaitl was the distributor in chief. He assisted on Bouchard's first goal, Bouchard's second, Podkolzin's breakaway and McDavid's 4-on-4 goal, and he was plus-4. McDavid, meanwhile, logged 24:31 and finished with a goal and two assists. NHL.com noted he leads the league with 12 points and has reached at least 10 points through four games for the fourth time in his career.

Podkolzin extended his point streak to four games, and Levi made 29 saves on 31 shots, holding firm while Anaheim outshot Edmonton 31-19.

Turning Point: The Eleven-Second Wake-Up Call

The Oilers' first shift of the second period changed everything. Bouchard's goal arrived on the period's very first shift, and suddenly a team that had been chasing all night had its legs.

"We got a good start, right off the bat, with a big goal, first shift, and just kept on plugging away from there," Ekholm said.

Anaheim coach Joel Quenneville saw the same thing from the other bench, and he did not love it.

"They scored at the beginning of the period and the end of the period in the last minute," Quenneville said. "In between, we didn't do much. I think we watched a lot."

Sennecke was equally blunt: "We came out flat at the start of the second and we can't do that."

Stats That Matter

• 5-0: Edmonton's second-period scoring edge.
• 6 goals: Bouchard's league-leading total through four games.
• 4 assists: Draisaitl's line, all of them in the second period.
• 31-19: Shots on goal, Anaheim over Edmonton.
• 2-for-7: Anaheim's power play, which accounted for both of its goals.

What It Means

Edmonton improves to 3-0-1 and 2-0-0 on the road, opening a three-game California swing with its third straight win. NHL.com noted the Oilers have scored at least five goals in three of their four games and lead the league at 5.5 goals per game. Draisaitl, to his credit, refused to let anyone get carried away.

"That's a good team over there, let's not get ahead of ourselves here," Draisaitl said.

Next up is a Saturday visit to San Jose.

Anaheim drops to 2-1-0 and 1-1-0 at home, losing for the first time this season after a 3-2 overtime win over Florida on Sunday. Carlsson had two assists and, per NHL.com, became the first player in team history with three straight multipoint games to start a season. Nikita Klepov, the No. 15 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, made his NHL debut with five hits in 10:03, and at 18 years, 102 days old he became the youngest player in Ducks history.

Quenneville's diagnosis was clear: "In the three games, this is the first time we looked like we were in a watching mode, instead of the anticipating and the forcing mode."

The Ducks visit Winnipeg on Friday.

Closing Take

Anaheim did a lot right for 20 minutes and still lost by three, which is the cruelest thing about facing this Edmonton team. The Oilers can look disinterested for a period and then score five in the next one, like a streaming series that is slow for an episode and then drops three plot twists at once. And at the center of it is a defenseman who keeps showing up in sentences next to Bobby Orr.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details from the Associated Press and NHL.com; postgame quotes as reported by NHL.com.