The Anaheim Ducks open a four-game Eastern Conference road trip today, as they meet the New York Rangers in the first half of a weekend back-to-back set.
To this point, the Ducks’ start has been pretty decent on paper, holding a 3-2-1 record through their first six games. They’re coming off a four-day break, following a 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday.
But to this point, the Ducks also haven’t faced the highest quality of competition. Two of their three wins have come against the winless Sharks, and they haven’t looked great in some of their losses to the likes of the Colorado Avalanche and Los Angeles Kings. Heading into the road trip though, they’ll face three teams in a row who could all be playoff teams this year, in the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders, over a four-day stretch.
So far, Lukas Dostal has been the team’s MVP. He’s started five of the six games, posting an excellent .936 save percentage over that stretch. But the questions that remain are: 1) is this level of play sustainable from Dostal, 2) can Anaheim still find a way to hang around in games if it isn’t, and 3) if John Gibson does play on this road trip, how does he look in his return.
On the blue line, Pavel Mintyukov and Brian Dumoulin have been very good for the Ducks. But there have been some defensive growing pains for the likes of Olen Zellweger, Tristan Luneau and Jackson LaCombe at times. The Ducks essentially have seven defenders that would be expected to regularly slot into the lineup (plus Urho Vaakanainen), and considering Anaheim will be at the 10-game mark coming out of the road trip, it’ll be interesting to see if we see a more established group of six regulars coming out of it.
Perhaps the biggest test though will be with the team’s offense. Troy Terry has been very good and Leo Carlsson is already one of the team’s more consistent forwards, but Anaheim still hasn’t found reliable scoring from their top-six. With a four-game stretch against tougher competition, it’s really important that the likes of Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish and Cutter Gauthier begin to hit their stride over the road trip to provide some consistent, game-after-game offense.
Then while the Ducks may have finally registered a couple goals on the man advantage in the win over San Jose, their power play has been a huge concern overall this season. The road trip serves as a sizeable stretch of games to start to build some momentum after converting against the Sharks and hopefully, they'll be able to generate more sustained pressure on their power plays going forward.
The Ducks have benefitted from a bit of an easier schedule to this point, but now they’re playing three games in four nights against competitive teams. It’s a bit of a sink-or-swim scenario over a better sample size, where we’ll really get to see how the Ducks compare to some better teams. They’ve been able to get to a 3-2-1 record largely off wins against weaker competition, but have looked out of place in some of their losses. So we can expected this road trip will serve as a stretch of games that could really either build some momentum through four games, or quickly show that the team may not be all that much more competitive.
OTHER ARTICLES FROM OCTOBER
- Ducks split back-to-back to open season with win over Sharks, loss to VGK
- Ducks beat Utah in home opener after back-and-forth battle
- Lukas Dostal makes 45 saves, but Ducks fall to Avalanche in overtime
- Ducks' offense falls flat in 4-1 loss to Kings
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