It was a full team effort for the Ducks to drop the Black Friday Matinee by a score of 5-1 to the Ottawa Senators.
Going into today’s game, the Ducks and the Senators were tied for last place in the NHL with 13 points. Penalties, poor execution, and bad coaching provided the perfect recipe needed to show just why the Ducks are now in sole possession of last place in the NHL.
The Ducks dominated play early in the first, getting quality scoring chances but just not finishing. All of the Ducks momentum came to a halt when Ryan Strome took a tripping penalty with 4:35 left in the first. Senators captain, Brady Tkachuk, nets a power play goal to open the scoring.
The Senators’ second goal started with Trevor Zegras trying to force a pass across the ice on the rush, which gets intercepted, and Zegras gets caught coasting on the back check and forces Frank Vatrano to leave his position to pressure the trailing Mathieu Joseph, who then hits Derick Brassard for the open goal.
Once again, the Ducks started the second period with pressure and got more scoring chances that they could not convert, only to give up another power play goal, this time to Tim Stutzle halfway through the second, to make it 3-0.
A few minutes later, all five Ducks players on the ice somehow find themselves below the hash marks on a Senators rush, leaving Artem Zub wide open to fire home a wrister to put the Senators up 4-0.
The Ducks continued their sloppy play into the third period, where Frank Vatrano got caught puck-watching and left Mathieu Joseph open in front of the net to make a nice play and score as he was falling down on his back. Now it is 5-0 Senators.
To avoid the shutout, Max Jones does what he does best and uses his body to get in front of the net and whacks in a rebound in a pile of bodies. The Senators challenged the goal for goaltender interference on Max Jones, something that Senators goalie, Cam Talbot, is all too familiar with at Honda Center.
The Ducks took a whopping eight penalties in the game, including five in the second period alone, which is not a great plan if you have the second-worst penalty kill in the league at 65.8%. The Senators took advantage and were able to convert three power play goals.
The Ducks also have the worst power play in the league at 11.3%, and it was on full display today. The Senators gave the Ducks six power plays and came away with zero power play goals to show for it. The first power play seemed promising as their PP1 unit of Fowler-Henrique-Terry-Zegras-McTavish provided some decent scoring chances and moved the puck well.
But it was short-lived as head coach Dallas Eakins decided to roll out their PP2 unit of Shattenkirk-Strome-Silfverberg-Vatrano-Lundestrom, and the remainder of the power play was spent chasing the puck. This has been a problem for the Ducks all season, and it does not make sense why Eakins sends out the PP2 unit as much as he has, considering the talent dropoff from PP1 to PP2 is so severe.
In today’s game, the Senators PP1 unit had over five minutes of ice time compared to the three minutes their PP2 unit had—a two minute separation of ice time. Whereas the Ducks had more time on the power play yet, their PP1 only had about 30 seconds more ice time than their PP2.
At one point, Eakins rolled out Max Jones, Sam Carrick, and Brett Leason to start a power play. When things are not going well, you switch things up, but sending out three career 4th line players to run your power play is not, and will probably never be the answer. The only one of those three that makes sense is Jones because he has been pretty good on the forecheck all season and had another strong game tonight with a goal late in the game.
To look at the positives, along with Jones, Mason McTavish played well again and continues to improve this year. The 19-year-old is making the most of his first full NHL season and has played well enough to earn more ice time. Although, it would be nice to see him play up on the second line at center because he will get more minutes and will have better talent on his wings to maximize his growth as a player.
Another reason why it would be nice to have McTavish on the second line because the second line has been a big struggle lately, especially today. The Frank Vatrano-Ryan Strome-Jakob Silfverberg second line produced a feeble 0.009 xG against the Senators. Vatrano and Strome do not seem to gel together, as they never seem on the same page on passes, and Silfverberg is not the same player as he was three years ago before hip surgery. If the Ducks want any improvement on offense, they need to come up with something else for that line.
Up next, the Ducks face the Seattle Kraken on Sunday at 5:00 PT at Honda Center.
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