The Ducks will look for their fifth straight win on the second half of a road back-to-back, tonight facing off with the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena.
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Anaheim hits the midway point of a three-game road trip looking to replicate a strong performance Saturday night in Boston, a 3-2 overtime victory clinched by Leo Carlsson’s game-winning goal.
“I thought we were really good in the first period, on our toes and on the puck a lot,” head coach Greg Cronin said. “Second period turned into a special teams game…In the third period it was a typical kind of a playoff game. You have to eliminate any scoring chances against and keep the puck in their zone. For the most part, we did a good job in that department.”
Emerging from the 4 Nations Face-Off break with a fourth consecutive win, and the club’s seventh in the last eight games, the Ducks are now 25-24-7 on the season, just seven points back of a Western Conference Wild Card position.
“We’ve had that confidence since before Christmas time,” Cronin said, referencing wins over Winnipeg, Edmonton and New Jersey in December. “Those are games I call benchmark games, you know you can compete with anyone in the league. Now we just need to keep finding ways to get better as a group.”
“We just have to believe in one another in this room,” added winger Frank Vatrano, who scored his team-best 17th goal of the season in the win over Boston. “We’re a really close group and all get along. At the end of the day, everybody wants to play in the playoffs, right? So, for us, we’re not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves. We’re trying to take it game by game and try to grow every single day in practice and in games.”
The lone potential hiccup for Anaheim Saturday night came between the pipes, as goaltender John Gibson was forced to leave the game with an upper-body injury after the second period. Gibson had stopped 19-of-20 Boston shots and did not return. His status for Sunday’s game is yet to be announced. Lukas Dostal earned the win for the Ducks in relief.
“He’s terrific,” Cronin said of Dostal’s work in the third period and overtime. “It’s happened a couple times this year and every time he’s gone in, he’s done well. He’s a unique kid. He doesn’t need a lot of prep work [in the moment], because he does all that prep work before he comes to the game. He’s ready to go no matter what happens.”
“They’ve been our backbone all year,” Vatrano said of the duo. “They’ve given us a chance to win every single night.”
Anaheim now visits the Motor City to take on a Red Wings team also skating in the second half of a back-to-back, after falling 4-3 in overtime to the Wild last night.
“It was a tight game,” Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin told the team’s Jonathan Mills postgame. “We didn’t capitalize on the power play there at the end…Then in overtime, we got a power play, we get our looks. We got to score there to put the game away.”
Anaheim claimed a 6-4 win over Detroit in the season’s first meeting, back in November at Honda Center. The Red Wings led 3-1 late in the second period but the Ducks would rally with four straight goals, including two power-play tallies and Cutter Gauthier’s first career NHL goal.
Detroit (28-22-6, 62 points) sits fourth in the Atlantic Division, currently holding the Eastern Conference’s top Wild Card spot.
