Preview: Ducks Back to Work Tonight vs. Maple Leafs
Anaheim gets right back to work after opening the four-game trip with a 3-0 loss to the Senators last night in Ottawa. The Ducks were done in by a two-goal night by the Sens' power-play unit, continuing a frustrating season for Anaheim's penalty kill.
"It comes down to special teams," head coach Dallas Eakins said. "In this league, you've either got to win the special teams battle or, at the very minimum, be even and our Achilles heel this year has been just that. You're not going to win many games in this league unless you're even or better."
"Sometimes when you get on these bad runs it seems like even the games you think you play well, they just don't go your way," Kevin Shattenkirk added. "That's the tough part."
With the loss, Anaheim dropped to 7-19-3 on the season and 2-12-3 on the road.
"A lot of our small details were missing," Shattenkirk said. "Bad changes and not putting pucks in the right places on dumps. Give them credit. They came out and played hard. They bottled us up in the neutral zone. Hopefully, tomorrow night we can give more.
"We have to have hard conversations. Positive, but hard. We can't shy away from the mistakes we're still making at this point in the season."
A bright spot for Anaheim Monday night was the impressive season debut of rookie netminder Lukas Dostal, who turned aside 35-of-38 Ottawa shots.
"He played extremely well,"
Eakins told NHL.com's Callum Fraser postgame
. "He made a couple of huge saves...He was real solid. He's a great kid. He's a kid that you can cheer for a lot just because of his character, his attitude, how he works. I wish we could've played a little bit better for him and maybe got it to an overtime game."
"Coming from the AHL, at the start the game's a little bit different," Dostal said. "It took me maybe just a couple of minutes to adjust, but as the game went on, I felt pretty good out there, actually. Obviously, still upset we lost, but personally, I felt pretty good out there."
The Ducks continue their four-game trip tonight against a Maple Leafs team that is again one of the NHL's best, currently second in the Atlantic Division (18-5-6, 42 points).
"Luckily we get a chance to redeem ourselves tonight] in Toronto," Shattenkirk said. "It's a fun environment to play in against a team that's playing really well right now and garners all of your attention. We've got to make sure we're ready."
The Leafs have won three straight games, including home ice victories over the Kings and Flames last week.
"We're thrilled we get the win and get two points,"
[Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe told NHL.com's Dave McCarthy after Saturday's win over Calgary
. "I thought we still did a lot of good things in the game that helped us ensure we get two points.
"I thought we did a lot of things that were not good in the game that made the game a lot harder on ourselves than it needed to be, and it's been quite some time since that's been the case."
Anaheim earned a
4-3 overtime victory over Toronto
in the first meeting between the teams earlier this season, when Trevor Zegras took a stretch pass from John Gibson in the extra session and beat Leafs goaltender Erik Kallgren on the subsequent 2-on-1 rush.
The Ducks have earned points in four of their last five games against the Maple Leafs (2-1-2).
