Business is About to Pick Up
The preliminaries are over and tonight we get down to the games that we waited six months for. Playoff time has arrived and it arrives with a fair amount of bad blood. Tensions will be high between the Ducks and Flames, due to the injury defenseman Cam Fowler suffered when these teams met 10 days ago. Throw in the fact that the Ducks have beaten Calgary 24 straight times at the Honda Center as well as the increased intensity level in the playoffs and things could get extremely physical.
Calgary is a good young team and are getting better. They have talented players that are able to score at any time. This streak may or may not continue through round one, but make no mistake the Flames are nobody's door mat. Goaltending and the penalty kill are in the Ducks favor. One matchup to watch for is Anaheim's second line of Cogliano/Kesler/Silfverberg against Calgary's top line.
Calgary @ Ducks: Round One, Game One
The Ducks start this series down two key players. Fowler is one and Nick Ritchie who will complete his two game suspension is the other. Ondrej Kase will once again fill in for Ritchie on the third line. Fowler will be replaced by Shea Theodore. Talent isn't issue with the replacement players, experience is. Both are Kase and Theodore are rookies and have each played 53 regular season games. John Gibson will defend the Ducks net. Here is tonight's lineup:
Forwards Rakell-Getzlaf-Eaves Cogliano-Kesler-Silfverberg Kase-Vermette-Perry Wagner-Thompson-Shaw
Defensemen Theodore-Manson Lindholm-Montour Bieksa-Vatanen
Goalies Bernier Gibson