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Ryan Poehling was not entirely sure the puck had crossed the line.
Standing behind the net at Honda Center on Sunday, he watched his teammates celebrate and thought to himself: did that actually go in? It had. After a lengthy review, officials confirmed the puck had completely crossed the goal line, giving the Anaheim Ducks a 4-3 overtime victory and a commanding 3-1 series lead over the Edmonton Oilers.
The sequence that produced the winner was equal parts skill and chance. Mason McTavish stripped Trent Frederic off an Oilers clearing attempt and fed Poehling down the left-wing wall. Poehling pushed the puck in front, where it deflected off Darnell Nurse — who was tied up with Chris Kreider — and squeezed through goaltender Tristan Jarry with just enough momentum to slide over the line.
"I thought I saw some white between the puck and the goal line when I was behind the net," Poehling said, "and then everyone was celebrating. Did that go in? I'm like, I think so. I thought right away that it crossed the line."
The referees did not immediately signal a goal. After huddling at center ice for somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds, they declared it a goal before the play went to video review. Edmonton coach Kris Knoblauch was not satisfied with the process. "It wasn't very definitive," he said. The Oilers maintain the goal should not have stood.
Ducks coach Joel Quenneville drew an unlikely comparison after the game, saying Poehling's celebration behind the net reminded him of Patrick Kane's famous 2010 Stanley Cup-winning overtime goal. "Long way to go to dream like that," Quenneville added, "but you look at the replay, and we all thought it was in."
The goal capped another comeback for Anaheim. The Ducks had fallen behind 2-0 in the first period before erasing the deficit with two power play goals in the second. Jeffrey Viel then tied the game at 3-3 with 6:29 left in regulation, setting up what became the Ducks' first playoff overtime game in nine years. It was also Anaheim's 10th multi-goal comeback win of the season, the most in the league, and their first of the playoffs.
The result snapped Edmonton's streak of six consecutive Game 4 wins when trailing 2-1 in a series and ended a run of 10 straight Game 4 victories overall. The Oilers have now seen a lead erased in all four games of this series, a pattern that speaks to either a defensive fragility or an unusual capacity to lose ground in crucial moments — or both.
The Ducks now travel to Edmonton for Game 5 on Tuesday with a chance to close out the series and advance to the second round for the first time since 2017, when they beat these same Oilers in seven games. A win would also be their first series victory since that second-round run nine years ago. For a franchise that spent years rebuilding, Tuesday represents the clearest shot yet at a meaningful return to playoff relevance.
