Road-rampaging Wild take aim at skidding Ducks
One of the NHL's top road teams looks to continue its success away from home when the Minnesota Wild visit the Anaheim Ducks on Friday.
The Wild are 6-1-1 in away games this season, with a league-best 13 road points.
After taking a 5-1 home loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday, the Wild got back in the win column at the start of a three-game road trip on Thursday, picking up a 5-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks.
"I think if you want to be a competitive team, you can't just be a good home team," Wild coach John Hynes said. "You've got to have that road warrior mentality, and I think the team embraces that. (When) coming into another team's building, everyone's got to be pulling the rope in the right direction."
Kirill Kaprizov had three assists against San Jose, as he broke his mini-slump of two games without a point. The star forward ranks second in the NHL with 24 points, one behind the total of the Colorado Avalanche's Nathan MacKinnon. Kaprizov has logged 17 points (four goals, 13 assists) in away games.
Beyond their good form on the road, the Wild also have the momentum of their longstanding dominance over the Ducks. Minnesota is 15-1-0 in its past 16 matchups with Anaheim dating back to January 2021.
That creates a major challenge for a Ducks team sitting near the bottom of the NHL standings. Anaheim is 0-2-1 in its past three games, including losses to the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks in the first two contests of a six-game homestand.
Olen Zellweger scored less than six minutes into the Ducks' 5-1 loss to Vancouver on Tuesday, but the early lead evaporated when the Canucks scored five unanswered goals. Anaheim was outshot 37-22, continuing the team's difficulties in both scoring and simply getting pucks on the net.
"It seems like the harder you try, the harder things become," Ducks forward Alex Killorn told the Orange County Register. "We took good steps in the Chicago game. We played really well and we created a lot of shots. It seemed like (Tuesday), we didn't have a ton of energy. ... It seemed like we had a good, decent start and then we never found it, ever again."
The Ducks' 25 goals are the fewest in the NHL, and the club has also struggled on both the power-play (6-for-40, 15 percent) and on the penalty kill (25-for-34, 73.5 percent).
Minnesota's penalty-kill unit has struggled to an even greater extent, as its 66.7 percent success rate ranks 31st out of 32 teams. The Wild are hopeful the Thursday game was a turning point, as they went 3-for-3 on kills against San Jose. It was just the fifth time in 13 games that Minnesota didn't allow a power-play tally.
Since Marc-Andre Fleury faced the Sharks, Filip Gustavsson likely will get the nod Friday in the second half of the Wild's back-to-back set. Gustavsson has a strong .917 save percentage and a 2.33 goals-against average in nine starts this season.
Goaltender Lukas Dostal has been a bright spot for Anaheim, though nine of his 25 goals allowed came in his past two outings. Dostal has started 10 of Anaheim's 12 games, so backup James Reimer might face Minnesota if the Ducks feel Dostal needs some rest.
