The Ducks laid an egg on Sunday night against their Nor Cal rivals from San Jose. They have a chance to right the ship with a strong showing tonight against the stumbling and equally desperate New York Rangers.
New York is making its way through the dreaded California road trip. They lost a tough one to the Kings on Sunday, face Anaheim tonight and visit San Jose on Thursday.
The Rangers have only two wins in the last seven games and they are losing ground in the East. To say they are desperate for points is an understatement.
The Ducks have been playing better of late and they want to win these last two home games before the All-Star break. They too will playing desperate hockey tonight.
What to watch for...
- The Ducks need to stay out of the penalty box. They were very undisciplined against San Jose, leading to five Sharks power play. They converted on two of those to put the game out of reach. The Ducks discipline issue is nothing new. They are tied for the league lead in both penalties (224) and major penalties (20). When you're trying to win hockey games you can't be killing penalties all night long.
- Anaheim should press to score the first goal of the game. They need to get used to playing with a lead. They never lead vs. San Jose and more often than not they find themselves trying to fight back from 1-0, 2-0 deficits. Besides, the Rangers are 16-5-1 when scoring first.
- Tonight seems like a good night for the streaky Corey Perry to get hot. Perry has seven goals this season, but he has only one in his last nine games. Hopefully playing along side Adam Henrique will help fix that.
- Ondrej Kase has been on of the better Duck forwards of late. He has points in three straight games and seven points in his last eight games. However, five of those points came in two games. He has just three goals in those eight games. He's average nearly 2.5 shots per game in that span, but only one shot in his lat two games against two big rivals. I'd like to see him get a little greedy and shoot more. He has tremendous skill. Time to use it.
- Hampuis Lindholm has zero points and is a minus-4 in the last two games. Meanwhile Francois Beauchemin is a plus-2 with an assist. Now sure what that means, except Lindholm plays 8-10 minutes more per night that Franky and I expect more from him.
Enjoy the game.
Thanks for reading, Steve