Ducks on 6-game slide heading into game with Canucks
Following an 8-2 shelling , the Ducks made a quick escape from Edmonton and were on to Vancouver to wrap up a two-game jaunt north of the border against the Canucks on Tuesday.
The Ducks actually held not one but two leads on Sunday as Max Jones tripled his goal total for the season in a stretch that spanned just over six minutes. But the Oilers scored on three of their first four shots, including a breakaway and a three-on-one rush, setting the scene for the deluge that followed.
During the brief yet eventful Coach Greg Cronin era, the Ducks won six straight games but they’ve now reached a losing streak of commensurate length with one of this year’s biggest risers in the early going, Vancouver, on deck.
“Winning streaks, losing streaks, we have to step away from focusing on those,” Cronin told reporters. “I told [our team] to look at the game as a learning opportunity. It’s a long season. It’s terrible to be on the losing side of an 8-2 game but sometimes that happens. We just need to move forward.”
Cronin commented that while the final score was lopsided, he liked his team’s start, which had been an emphasis entering the match. He also acknowledged that his young group featured players who had not yet grown accustomed to elite level competition, which they got in the form of, among others, the top two scorers in the NHL last season.
That firepower was very much on display with captain Connor McDavid slathering on five points (he now leads all active players in career five-point games with nine) to headline a list of half a dozen multi-point performances for the Oilers, including running mate Leon Draisaitl’s goal and assist. Of the last seven NHL scoring titles, McDavid has won five with Draisaitl capturing another.
Edmonton, which had the most lethal power play in NHL history last season, did its damage five-on-five for 40 minutes as the Ducks took only one penalty through two periods. That changed in the final frame when five Ducks minor penalties turned into two Edmonton power-play goals.
“We’ve been hammering the message of trying to stay out of the box and we definitely didn’t do a good job at that,” Jones told reporters.
The discipline that eluded the Ducks in the third period as well as stronger defensive coverage will be paramount in Vancouver. The Canucks had 10 more goals than any other team in the NHL entering Monday’s schedule and they rank third in power-play conversion rate, making good on 30% of their opportunities to date (Edmonton’s record figure was 32.4%).
Vancouver features five players who average at least a point per game this season, including two defensemen. Quinn Hughes’ 33 points in 22 games match the production of Vancouver’s most prolific forward, J.T. Miller, and have made Hughes an early favorite for the Norris Trophy. Blue-liner Filip Hronek has 22 points in as many games after being acquired near the trade deadline last season.
Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser have also gotten off to hot starts, as has goalie Thatcher Demko. Demko sat tied for second in wins on Monday morning, and he ranks in the top four in both save percentage and goals-against average among goalies with 10 or more appearances in 2023-24.
DUCKS AT CANUCKSWhen: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, British Columbia
TV: Bally Sports SoCal
