The Ducks are back in Orange County for the opener of a three-game homestand, tonight hosting the Minnesota Wild at Honda Center.
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Anaheim returns to home ice hoping to get back on track after a winless four-game road trip pushed the club's losing skid to six. The latest of those setbacks came Sunday night in St. Louis, as the Ducks were unable to hold a first-period lead and fell behind in the third on three Blues power-play goals.
"I thought we played a good game," head coach Greg Cronin said. "I thought we had energy and pop. But again, you can't win a game giving up three power-play goals, right?"
"I think 5-on-5 we played a good game," added Troy Terry, who scored twice. "We've got to find a way to limit these penalties...It's just kind of the story for a lot of our games this year."
The Ducks have now allowed 10 power-play goals in their last four games, including six in the last two.
"We need to skate more. When you're skating more, you're not taking those [stick] penalties," Leo Carlsson said. "I had a bad penalty myself...We take unneccessary penalties, hookings, tripping, stuff like that. It's been killing us."
Carlsson returned to the lineup Sunday after missing eight games with a concussion. The rookie center immediately returned to Anaheim's top line, skating alongside Frank Vatrano and Alex Killorn and finishing with one assist and three shots with a +1 rating in 19:05 of ice-time.
"I felt good," Carlsson said. "I had a couple long shifts and my conditioning there wasn't the best, but otherwise I felt pretty good. Had some good speed out there and I had fun."
"Leo was terrific," Cronin said. "He's a game-changing player and he made our team better."
Anaheim now meets Minnesota for the second time in six days, fresh off the Wild's 2-0 shutout win last week at Xcel Energy Center. Minnesota put on a defensive clinic that night, holding Anaheim to 16 shots in the sixth leg of what is now a seven-game point streak.
"Lot of blocked shots and the defense in front boxing out, taking rebounds," veteran goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury told NHL.com's Jessi Pierce of the Wild's defense. "I thought we played solid. We didn’t give them much. So, it’s nice to get that one and celebrate the win.”
Cronin echoed the assessment, "[Minnesota] blocked a lot of shots. They packed the inside third of the ice, and we couldn’t get them through. They were blocking them out at the blue line, they were blocking at the net, and they did a really good job keeping us to the outside.
“I think we played well. We just weren’t good enough."
The Wild continued that point streak Saturday with a comeback effort in St. Louis, erasing a 2-0 deficit to force overtime against the division rival Blues but ultimately falling in the shootout.
"I really liked the push back in the third period," Minnesota coach John Hynes said to NHL.com's Lou Korac. "We knew the second period probably was not our best, but when you look at the group's effort, we gave ourselves a chance to battle back in the game and not only get back in the game, but we gave ourselves an opportunity to win the game.
Minnesota (33-27-8, 74 points) sits sixth in the Central Division, five points back of Vegas for the Western Conference's second Wild Card position.
