The Ducks paid their first visit to the infamous Mullett Arena last night and walked away with a 5-2 victory over the Arizona Coyotes.
The first five minutes of the game were lackluster for both teams, each not being able to get many chances or even have possession for lengths of time. Then the Ducks started finding their stride and completely took over the game.
The Ducks spent the majority of the rest of the period inside the Coyotes’ zone and got into some high-danger scoring chances but either could not connect the pass or just fumbled the puck at the last second.
It was not until a little over two minutes left in the first when Troy Terry found Frank Vatrano in the high slot on the zone entry, and Vatrano fired it home to get the Ducks on the board first.
The Ducks would come out hot in the second period and add another to their lead after Juuso Valimaki got a five-minute major and a game misconduct for his axe-like slash to the back of Max Jones, who was in pain for a while on the bench after that. While on a delayed penalty, Terry picked up the puck at the left face-off circle in Anaheim’s zone and went coast to coast with some dazzling stick handling through the Coyotes’ defenders and finished it by going high glove side for a highlight reel goal.
Then 44 seconds into the five minute major, Terry, again on the zone entry, dishes it to Cam Fowler, who skates with it into the slot and fires a wrister past Connor Ingram to extend the Ducks’ lead to 3-0.
By the halfway point of the game, the Ducks were outshooting the Coyotes 30-12, and it looked like they were going to run away with it. But then the tides turned a little over halfway through the second period, and it was the Coyotes turn to control possession for the remainder of the period. After being in favor 30-12 in shots, the Ducks ended the second period 32-25.
The Coyotes would carry that momentum into the third period and started the period with a flurry of chances, but Anthony Stolarz made some good saves to keep the Coyotes scoreless.
Despite the Coyotes surge, Fowler would strike again and bomb a slapshot from the point to give the Ducks their biggest lead of the season at 4-0. Jakob Silfverberg did an excellent job screening Ingram, so he had no chance to make the save.
But alas, the shutout bid would end when Simon Benoit made an atrocious turnover in front of the Ducks’ net, and Barrett Hayton made a nice move to backhand it past Stolarz.
The Coyotes would tag on another on the power play when Jakob Chychrun’s slap shot from the point got blocked, and Benoit vacated his position to chase for it, which allowed Hayton to set up Nick Schmaltz for the easy tap-in where Benoit should have been.
It was too late for the Coyotes, though, as Adam Henrique put on the finishing touch on the game and hit the empty netter to seal the deal 5-2.
With a couple of minutes left in the game, Josh Brown tried to start some shenanigans with anybody that would go to show his frustration. Brown also cross-checked and got in a couple of jabs at Max Comtois’ face in the opening period.
This is now the third straight game the Ducks have played against the Coyotes, where there have been some fireworks. Things got awfully chippy in the preseason as Coyotes players took shots at Trevor Zegras and even made Zegras leave the game with an upper-body injury after Jan Jenik caught him up high with a hard hit. And, of course, everyone remembers the incident last year when Jay Beagle jumped Terry for going for a loose puck in a 5-0 game that left Terry with a bruised and bloody face.
It will be very interesting to see how things play out when these two teams meet again at Honda Center on Saturday.
Takeaways
The score does not tell a complete story of how this game went at all. As mentioned before, the Ducks had complete control of the game for the first half of play, and then things flipped upside down. The Ducks outshot the Coyotes 30-12 in the first half of the game and then got outshot 27-13 the rest of the way.
Natural Stattrick had the Ducks’ Corsi for percentage (CF%) per period at 56.1% in the first, 52% in the second, and 36.36% in the third. For those that are not fluent in the advanced stat world, CF% is essentially a tale of how well a team has possession. A CF% above 50% means that the team had more possession than the other team.
Luckily for the Ducks, Anthony Stolarz was on his A-game, stopping 37-39 and having a 1.52 goals saved above expected, according to moneypuck.com. Stolarz stood tall the whole game and possibly could have earned a shutout if not for a couple of defensive miscues by Simon Benoit.
Troy Terry ended a 16 game scoreless streak with a three-point night where he racked in a highlight reel goal and two assists. Even with the 16 game scoreless streak, Terry is on pace to beat his career high in points from last year’s breakout season. The back-to-back all-star currently sits at 13-28-41, which is on pace for 22-48-70 compared to last year’s 37-30-67.
It was also a big night for Cam Fowler, who had three points, two goals, and an assist. Fowler is putting together another good offensive season from the blue line this year while manning the point in the Ducks’ top power-play unit. Fowler has done a steady job of moving the puck on that unit to set up the kids (Terry, Zegras, and Mason McTavish) for power-play goals, but it was nice to see him be able to find the back of the net himself.
Trevor Zergas picked up an assist to extend his point streak to six games. Zegras earned Third Star of the Week honors yesterday, but he has been hot for a little longer than that. In his last 13 games, Zegras has 7-9-16 to total 17-24-41 on the season, and many say he was an all-star snub.
The Ducks head to Colorado to finish their six-game road trip to face the defending champion Avalanche on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. PST.
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