The Ducks will sandwich the Thanksgiving holiday with a pair of games on home ice, tonight hosting the Montreal Canadiens at Honda Center.
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Anaheim hopes to hit the holiday thankful for a bounce back win after suffering its third straight setback Sunday night, a 3-1 defeat to St. Louis.
"We weren't getting in a rhythm," head coach Greg Cronin said. "It was a good road game by them. They were smart. They put it deep and didn't make too many mistakes...I didn't see a lot of scoring chances, really in either direction. There wasn't a lot of jump."
"We've got to find ways to create more offense," added winger Alex Killorn, who assist on Mason McTavish's goal marked his third point with the club. "I don't think we've been doing enough. In the guys start turning it over a little bit too much trying to create something, because we haven't created enough. I forced one in the first period, in the defensive zone, that puts us
down 1-0. That was on me...Overall, I don't know what the scoring chances were or anything like that. I think we're always pretty close, but there's some things we need to improve on."
The Ducks have scored just four goals in those three losses, which dropped the team to 9-9-0 on the season.
"I think we've just got to find ways to get pucks to the net," Killorn said. "You look at one of [the St. Louis] goals, where it's just kind of a rebound that hits off of a guy's skate. There's three guys down at the net. We've got to win those battles in front of the net like that."
"The one good thing is that we've come back so many times that we don't really see a one-goal or two-goal deficit as a big thing," Cronin said. "But we've continuously, I don't know how many times it's been now in a row, we've not scored the first goal. That does get old."
The Ducks will look to snap that skid against a Canadiens team that hasn't enjoyed much success in Orange County of late, as Anaheim has won each of the last seven meetings played at the corner of Katella and Douglass and swept the home-and-home set last season.
This year the Habs find themselves near the bottom of the already competitive Atlantic Division, currently sitting in eighth but only six points out of third.
Montreal begins its California trip on a four-game winless run of their own, last falling 5-2 to the rival Bruins on Saturday in Boston.
“I know what we’re capable of each and every night,” Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki told NHL.com's Joe Pohoryles. “Recently, it hasn’t been there. Our start was pretty bad, they got [us] hemmed in our zone a lot. Took too many penalties against a really good team, and it cost us a lot.”
The Ducks and Habs will also meet later this season in Montreal, set for Feb. 13 at Bell Centre.
