After grinding hard in close quarters, the Ducks hit the open skies for a lightning round of a road trip that’ll take them to Winnipeg on Thursday and Edmonton on Friday.
The Jets are the NHL’s most successful team this season by points total, while the Oilers lost in Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup Final. Yet the fledgling Ducks toughened up around their net and beat both teams in the course of 11 days last month.
Their victory over Edmonton rolled into another win against a first-half A-lister, the New Jersey Devils. They were leading their conference Tuesday morning, as Winnipeg was when the Ducks beat them on Dec. 18.
“We trust ourselves. We’ve worked really hard throughout the year. These are games that we’re always excited to play,” said goalie Lukás Dostál, who played all of the Ducks’ three games in four nights after the holiday break and has won four of five starts after taking just two of his previous 10.
While a scoring uptick has been vital for the Ducks –– something Coach Greg Cronin said would be more common once the power play shook its 1-for-31 doldrums –– their defensive play has been at the core of their recent advances. They’re 9-2-1 this season when allowing two or fewer goals, as they did in their triumphs over Winnipeg, Edmonton and New Jersey.
“Coming back on that flight from Pittsburgh [on Nov. 1], we were like .500, but we were getting bludgeoned defensively,” Cronin said. “We had a really good conversation with the leadership group and we said, ‘Let’s just focus on these things and build our game from these [defensive] things out.’”
Cronin said that in that first month of the season, the Ducks were “very negligent” around their crease, but that emphasizing trench play in practice was now permeating game action.
The Ducks also added Jacob Trouba via trade last month. He’s formed a shutdown pairing with another veteran addition, Brian Dumoulin, which has shown promising early returns. Along with Ryan Strome’s forward line, they were all over Edmonton’s Connor McDavid –– who has a matching 12-game, league-best scoring streak with Leon Draisaitl thanks in part to their work on the power play against the Ducks –– and New Jersey’s Jack Hughes. Against New Jersey, Dumoulin’s takeaway keyed a rush that resulted in a goal. He also saved a likely goal off a Jesper Bratt partial breakaway and nearly set up Leo Carlsson for a tally.
Trouba has boosted the Ducks’ truculence, much as captain Radko Gudas did last season after signing as a free agent.
“Now, you’ve got a lot of meat on the ice that’s intimidating,” Cronin said. “When you have people like that in front of your net, it’s a little bit of a danger zone for the opposition to go there.”
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The Ducks’ upcoming opponents have seldom been daunted, however, as Winnipeg’s Gabriel Vilardi has become one of the premiere presences down low in the NHL. His hands, creativity, precision and strength down low have made the former King a regular on Winnipeg highlight reels and helped him collect seven points across his active four-game surge. Kyle Connor has been even more dangerous, sitting sixth in the Art Ross race on Wednesday morning, and Mark Scheifele has tied him for the team lead in goals with 22.
Edmonton bounced back from a sweep by the Kings and Ducks over the weekend with a 4-1 win over Utah, much as Winnipeg reeled off four straight wins after its loss in Anaheim. Draisaitl and teammate Zach Hyman were among the six players who tied for the lead in goals for December with 10, as was Winnipeg’s Scheifele.