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Ducks split back-to-back to open season with win over Sharks, loss to VGK |
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The Anaheim Ducks opened their 2024-25 season by splitting their back-to-back set this weekend, defeating the San Jose Sharks 2-0 on Saturday, before falling 3-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights yesterday evening.
2-0 WIN OVER SHARKS
Against San Jose, the Ducks looked to have fallen behind only minutes in, when Fabian Zetterlund won a puck race on a dump in, and beat Lukas Dostal. However, upon a challenge, the play was deemed to have been offside, and the call was overturned. Following that point, the teams remained scoreless through much of the contest: the Ducks had five different power play opportunities to try to convert, but weren’t able to do so, while Lukas Dostal had to be good at the other end.
However, midway through the third period, Isac Lundestrom took a pass on the rush in the slot, and managed to beat Vitek Vanecek to finally open the scoring for good. Anaheim managed to hang on from there, with Trevor Zegras securing the win with an empty netter in the final minutes.
3-1 LOSS TO GOLDEN KNIGHTS
Then heading into Vegas, Urho Vaakanainen swapped in for Olen Zellweger, while James Reimer got the start.
Vegas was able to open the scoring six minutes in, when Cam Fowler turned the puck over down low and after James Reimer made an initial stop, Brett Howden was there to bury the rebound. However, only about five minutes later, Ivan Barbashev had a costly turnover of his own, sending Troy Terry in on a partial break to beat Ilya Samsonov, quickly tying the game.
It looked like the Golden Knights may have taken the lead back early in the second period off a puck knocked in by Alexander Holtz, but it was deemed to have been a high-stick. While Vegas couldn’t capitalize they outshot the Ducks 18-5 in the period, but the game remained tied through 40 minutes.
Vegas did end up taking back the lead about five minutes into the third period on a power play after building a lot of pressure, where Tomas Hertl took a pass in-close from Mark Stone to beat Reimer. Then after Anaheim couldn’t capitalize on a power play, Tristan Luneau gave the puck away to Keegan Kolesar, who fed Pavel Dorofeyev to beat Reimer, creating a multi-goal hole.
The Ducks didn’t even really have a chance to press at the end of the game due to a late penalty, falling 3-1.
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TAKEAWAYS
I think through two games, it’s still a little hard to judge where the Ducks stand. It was a fairly even game in San Jose, but the Sharks arguably had more high-danger opportunities. In a year where you’d like to see them take a step, it was an alright performance, but not one that necessarily signalled huge improvement from the get-go.
In Vegas, they did keep up well against a pretty good team, but there were still some costly mistakes, and stretches where they took their foot off the gas a bit.
That said, Anaheim has actually still been able to limit quality chances against to an extent, at least in comparison to last year. Expectations were probably fairly minimal for Brian Dumoulin coming into the year, but he’s looked good in the limited action so far.
The team’s defense group, while much more exciting and offensively-capable, is still going to have growing pains. The mistakes from the younger defenders like Olen Zellweger and Tristan Luneau are expected, but you’d like to see Cam Fowler figure things out. He’s regressed in his own end to be pretty mistake-prone, and that’s been on display through the opening games.
For the talent at the top of the Ducks’ forward group though, even if quite young, you’d love to see some results. The team has managed two non-empty net goals, and while the likes of Trevor Zegras, Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gautheir have all been fine, none have really been able to take over the game much through two contests.
In goal though, Lukas Dostal was rock solid against the Sharks. Especially without John Gibson available right now, Dostal has a great opportunity to really start pushing towards becoming a legitimate NHL starter. If he hadn’t been as good as he was in San Jose, it’s a game that could’ve certainly slipped away. Meanwhile James Reimer was solid as well, and as expected, he should be able to help stabilize the Ducks’ crease with Gibson away.
I think ultimately, the first two games were fine, but don’t necessarily instill a ton of confidence that the Ducks are poised for a major step this season (even if that also wasn’t necessarily an expectation based on the quiet offseason). They’ve looked better in the way of reducing chances, but you’d like to see the offense really start to come along as well.
The Ducks will be back in action on Wednesday, when they host Utah.
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