Against all odds and with key players sidelined, the Ducks delivered a dominant 60-minute effort to snap their winless streak.
Carrying a nine-game winless streak, the Anaheim Ducks were desperate for one on Tuesday night, when they hosted the Dallas Stars.
The Ducks returned home after going without a point on their most recent four-game road trip, and were without their three top scorers for Tuesday’s game. Troy Terry missed his third consecutive game with an upper-body injury, Leo Carlsson was sidelined with a lower-body injury, and Cutter Gauthier was forced from the game due to an illness.
The Dallas Stars were on their second game of a back-to-back, after defeating the Los Angeles Kings by a score of 3-1 on Monday. They were without #1 defenseman Miro Heiskanen, who couldn’t participate on Tuesday due to a personal family matter.
The Ducks were forced to run an 11/7 lineup, but Ian Moore played the entirety of the game up front. Here’s how they started this game:
Kreider-McTavish-Strome
Killorn-Granlund-Sennecke
Johnston-Poehling-Harkins
Nesterenko-Washe-Moore
LaCombe-Trouba
Mintyukov-Helleson
Zellweger-Gudas
Lukas Dostal got the start for the Ducks and saved 24 of 25 shots. Dostal was opposed by Casey DeSmith in the Dallas crease, who stopped 22 of 24.
Game Notes
With an odd set of circumstances: a forward playing defense, three top players (all game time scratches) out on one side, a top defenseman out on the other side, and one team on their second game of a back-to-back, the Ducks showcased one of their best 60-minute efforts of the season with “simplify” active as their operative word. They played contained in their end, reserved in the neutral zone, and won a high number of pucks back in the offensive zone, manufacturing several extended cycle sequences.
This was a genuinely stingy effort from a Ducks team that’s been notoriously leaky defensively this season. At 5v5, they dominated every metric: winning the shots on goal battle 20-14 (58.82%), the shot attempts battle 61-36 (62.89%), and holding 68.84% of the expected goals share.
“I really liked the game,” Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville said after the game. “Start to finish, a complete game. I know we talk about a ‘check-first’ mentality, but I thought we had pace in our game, we had support, we had puck time, we had zone time.
“Basically, we wanted to play that type of game today, and you couldn’t have drawn it up or asked for a better effort.
The guys really stuck together, dug down deep, and got a big two points for us in the worst way and against all odds.”
Defensive Zone Coverage: The Ducks played a much more passive and contained brand in their end during this game. When Dallas had possession, the secondary pressures were much more selective with their decision-making to help along the perimeter. In doing so, the middle was much more protected against cycles, and Dostal was allowed to make more predictable reads from the crease.
Breakouts/Regroups: All six defensemen did well to get to pucks deep in their end, as they also played more passively through the neutral zone and limited their offensive zone pinches. Defensemen did well to evade F1, and forwards put themselves in proper spots to cleanly receive outlets, scanning beforehand so they could make connecting passes in the neutral zone.
They played a much more north-south game than they’d been playing through the first half of the season, which improved their puck management and limited the offensively inclined defensemen’s urges and opportunities to join rushes, leaving them in better positions to defend counters.
Beckett Sennecke/Mikael Granlund: Sans the Ducks' top offensive producers, the duo of Sennecke and Granlund picked up the slack and drove most of the offense in this game. Sennecke was as dynamic as ever in open ice, displayed quality vision from the perimeter, and offered the Ducks much-needed grit, potting one of the greasier goals of the season, which wound up the game-winner.
Granlund was clever and shifty with the puck on his stick, getting off some quick releases on cutbacks to the middle, spinning off some talented Stars defenders in the corners, and connecting on countless slip passes from small areas.
The Ducks will hope to get healthy quickly and build off this effort when they play a home-and-home against the rival Los Angeles Kings on Friday and Saturday.