Yes, you can do something like that. e.g
When the player presses the left mouse button the character will play the jump attack animation - when he overlaps with the shield a bool variable gets activated which either stops the animation (he will fall back into idle) or you can also play another animation (that he gets pushed back and falls on his back). Therefore I would use a montage -> you have more possibilities to controle the animations.
I use the same technique for my combat/blocking system