The Ducks continue a season-long six-game homestand tonight, hosting the Columbus Blue Jackets on Military Appreciation Night at Honda Center.
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Tonight's game will be exclusively broadcast on Victory+, a newly formed sports network and direct-to-consumer streaming service, created for Ducks fans by A Parent Media Co. Inc. All local games are available to in-market Ducks fans to stream free of charge. For more about Victory+, click here.
The night also includes Anaheim's annual Military Appreciation Night celebration, tonight headlined by an all-female rappel team from the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant Academy descending from the Honda Center rafters. For more information on Military Appreciation Night, click here.
On the ice, the Ducks look to right the ship after suffering the club's fourth straight defeat, a 5-2 loss to the red-hot Minnesota Wild Friday. Anaheim, despite falling behind 3-0 in the first period, would get back within two early in the third on winger Robby Fabbri's 100th career NHL goal, but could not turn that momentum into a late comeback against one of the league's top defensive teams.
"There were a lot of positives tonight, the second period, the rotation of the lines and the rhythm we got into," head coach Greg Cronin said. "I really liked when [Isac] Lundestrom was with Fabbri and [Brock] McGinn. They all three skate, they all drive the puck deep and chase pucks down. I thought Leo [Carlsson] with [Frank Vatrano and Troy Terry] was a nice mixture of skate and skill. Frank's got that pace to his game. We've got to find lines that mesh in that four-line rotation."
"We show that we can do it," Fabbri said. "We have spurts of it and we just need to do it for 60 minutes. That'll give us the best chance to come out on top."
Cronin and Co. pointed to the second period, when Anaheim fired 15 shots on net and largely controlled the pace of play with several extended shifts in the Minnesota zone, as the blueprint for how the team needs to play going forward - and proof this group can get to that level.
"I think if there was one period that reflects the highs of our team, our skill and ability to generate offense, it’s that second period," Cronin said. "We had sustained offensive zone time. And then the weakness in our team is, we turn the puck over and get caught in our own zone and the other team gets multiple chances."
"It was shift after shift, line after line. You could see we had offensive zone changes, guys changing at the right times and we were keeping them on their heels," added defenseman Brian Dumoulin. "We didn’t have any costly turnovers. We were all kind of focused on getting pucks in and trying to wear them down a little bit. You could see shift after shift we were doing that and they were tired and we were kind of shifting the momentum in that second period."
Anaheim now turns its attention to a similiarly rebuilding Columbus squad looking to snap a four-game losing skid after last night's 5-2 loss to Los Angeles. The Blue Jackets led 1-0 early on winger Dmitri Voronkov's first goal of the season, but the Kings would take control in the middle frame and drop Columbus to 1-3-2 on the road.
“Honestly, I think we played a solid game,” Blue Jackets forward Justin Danforth told NHL.com's Dan Greenspan. “But at the end of the day, we want to come out with the win. We got to find a way to win games, that’s what playoff teams do, so we got to get back on track.”
“There were just key moments in the hockey game where we gave opportunities,” added head coach Dean Evason said to team reporter Jeff Svoboda. “Not saying we gave (them) goals because they took advantage of some stuff. But the first goal, we turn it over. The second goal, we make a huge mistake. The third goal, we turn it over. That’s three goals.
“We have a 1-0 lead. In key areas of the ice, we have to make the right reads or clearly not turn the puck over in order to give teams momentum to come back after us. And we did that tonight.”
Columbus (5-6-2, 12 points) sits seventh in the Metropolitan Division.
