Facing what was arguably a must-win game for all intents and purposes, the Anaheim Ducks cruised to a dominant victory Thursday night over Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Their performance through January going into the contest (3-7-2, including three shutout losses) gave off all the feelings of a decent season slipping away, but thanks to some big-time performances by a number of players, the Ducks got a win they sorely needed. Here’s what we learned.
John Gibson Is Still a Gamer
Pittsburgh native John Gibson proved last night that he still has game-changing capabilities as a goaltender. With just three wins in his previous dozen starts, though, things were looking grim as the Ducks endured a tough stretch of play that often left Gibson in an all-too-familiar state: facing a barrage of shots and getting little goal support in return. Last night was a different story, however, as he still faced plenty of shots (32 total, 31 saves) but did receive more than enough goal support.
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Head coach Greg Cronin reiterated in his postgame comments, accurately so, that goaltending has not been the problem this season. Whether it’s Gibson or Lukas Dostal, the Ducks can go into most games feeling comfortable with who they have in net. What we saw from Gibson last night was a guy who still has the athletic ability, confidence, and poise to be an elite goaltender in the NHL. While his 8-8-2 record and 2.76 goals-against average (GAA) don’t scream upper echelon, his .914 save percentage (SV%) sits 10th in the league among qualified goaltenders. That, by itself, is elite. Add in performances like last night, and it makes you wonder what his stats would be if he played on a better team.
Big Night Offensively Revealed What’s Possible, If Not Replicable
A principal lesson from last night has to be that when this offense clicks, it’s capable of putting up pretty good numbers. These types of performances are just so few and far between that it’s nearly impossible to predict, let alone believe, that they have figured out how to do it consistently. But let’s savor the big offensive night for a moment and recap the big performances.
Let’s start with Mason McTavish, whose two goals gave him his fourth and fifth points in his last six games and pushed him to nine goals on the season overall. Both times he scored from right where you are supposed to be if you want to score in this league: right on top of the blue paint. He has skated pretty consistently with Robby Fabbri and Cutter Gauthier in recent weeks and McTavish looks like he might be ready to have a much better second half of the season than his first, which was pretty underwhelming. However, he’s had big games recently, and last night was one of them.
Alex Killorn also deserves his flowers for his two-goal game. He scored his ninth and tenth of the season in the win, which was noteworthy given he had scored just once in the 16 games previous. Killorn brings value to this club as a two-time Stanley Cup champion but often is a frustrating enigma. His versatility has earned him so much opportunity to skate with the Ducks’ top talent, but it doesn’t result in the consistency that one would imagine, nor has it helped any of the young Ducks take a significant step forward. The back half of his 2023-24 season was his best hockey, though, so look for the back half of 2024-25 to follow suit. The Ducks need it.
The Troy Terry-Ryan Strome-Frank Vatrano line picked things back up as well. Terry continued his impressive season with two assists. Vatrano scored another goal, while Strome collected an assist. And let’s not forget about Jacob Trouba, who played perhaps his best game as a Duck. He went a whopping plus-5 in plus/minus and collected two assists in 22:06 of ice time.
The Ducks have an opportunity to prove to us that they can do this more consistently given they have a relatively soft finish to January with games against the Nashville Predators (Jan. 25) and Seattle Kraken (Jan. 28). Whether they do that or not is the question of the day. Or should we say season.
Power Play Failures Will Doom This Team Eventually
The Ducks’ January slide has likely cost them any chance of staying in the Western Conference wild card race. This win may have saved them yet, but if anything will sink this team, it’s their power play woes. They went scoreless again last night (0-for-2) and while it didn’t impact their ability to win the game this time, it will at some point. If the Ducks don’t turn it around or start using the power play as an opportunity to gain leads, put teams away, or generate momentum at the very least, they are going to lose games they have chances or maybe even deserve to win.
Bring On Nashville
Up next for the Ducks are the Nashville Predators, whose 18-22-7 record does not reveal the high level of play they have sustained in recent weeks. They have won five in a row and seven of their last 10, so this game presents a stiff challenge. While that may be true, the Ducks need this one as well. We’ll feel more comfortable about the state of this franchise when they consistently beat the teams they should beat. The Predators, hot streak or not, are one such team. It goes down on Saturday at Honda Center, 7 PM PST.
