As the Ducks returned from their split of a Midwestern back-to-back set and geared up to host the Utah Mammoth on Wednesday, their goalie depth was being put to the test.
Already down Lukáš Dostál (shoulder), Petr Mrázek sustained an injury during a 5-3 loss to Chicago on Sunday, when the Ducks gave up five unanswered goals. Seasoned third-stringer Ville Husso relieved him there and in St. Louis, where the Finn earned a 4-1 win against his former club.
Next, Husso, recalled netminder Vyacheslav Buteyets and their teammates will face a Utah Mammoth team that the Ducks topped in a 3-2 overtime affair on Nov. 17. Dostál has 11 of the Ducks’ 16 victories, including that one, but Husso has also had a winning record at 2-1-0.
“It’s huge to have all the goalies giving us a chance to win any night,” captain Radko Gudas told Victory+ following the win against the Blues. “(Husso) was [standing] on his head, and he was a big reason why we won.”
Two other significant factors were Pavel Mintyukov’s first multipoint performance of this campaign and a 6-for-6 night for the penalty kill.
Mintyukov has responded strongly to his string of three healthy scratches. He logged a season-high 21:15 in his first game back, then in his past three appearances he has two goals and three points.
“He’s feeling better and better since he stepped [back] in,” Gudas said of 2022’s 10th overall draft pick. “He doesn’t look back, he wants to be in the lineup every night, he wants to play big minutes and he wants to play important minutes as well.”
After deploying some of their top offensive players as a potential counterattack weapon shorthanded, the Ducks pulled back from that strategy, which had produced mixed results. Leo Carlsson, Jackson LaCombe and Troy Terry all played marginal minutes – or, more aptly, seconds – down a man on Monday.
“We changed our penalty-killing units a bit,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville told reporters. “We got through some kills. They had some good looks, they had some dangerous misses, but you get off to a start like that with the new units getting out there, I thought there were some good things.”
Since their last meeting with the Ducks, the Mammoth got former Kings defenseman Sean Durzi back but nearly lost their leading scorer.
Logan Cooley left Saturday’s game against St. Louis after receiving what appeared to be a knee-on-knee hit. Though the worst was feared, Cooley played Monday against San Jose after his diagnosis of a quadriceps contusion turned a potential Chernobyl into a mere Three-Mile Island.
Utah at Ducks
When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Honda Center
TV: TNT, truTV, HBO Max