Ducks return home against Tampa Bay full of resolve
Following their best 10-game stretch since November 2023, the Ducks migrated back south to host the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday after staring down a pair of challenges north of the border.
They’ve won six of their past 10 games, including signature victories over two marquee clubs, New Jersey and Edmonton, as well as two more against the NHL-pacing Winnipeg Jets.
In Winnipeg on Thursday, the Ducks rallied for the fourth time this season from a multiple-goal deficit, which tied them with Vegas and put them just one behind league-leading Seattle. In Edmonton on Friday, they again rallied from two goals down to create a tie that Leon Draisaitl broke with 95 seconds to play before his Oilers staved off what would have been the Ducks’ second six-on-five goal in as many nights.
“There is no quit in this group,” said Ducks forward Brett Leason to reporters in Edmonton, where he scored a goal Friday. “We have a lot of third-period comebacks, and it just shows that everybody is going to fight until the very end.”
In their previous win over Edmonton, the Ducks had to surmount a special-teams disadvantage fueled in significant part by Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and their two conversions on the power play. This time, they held McDavid scoreless for the first time in his past 13 games and while they ceded a man-advantage marker, they also scored one – just their second in 33 chances – and limited themselves to a lone penalty.
The Ducks had lost their prior three games in Edmonton by an aggregate count of 20-3, leading some observers to view Friday’s second game in two nights with travel as a scheduled loss. Even after a hard-fought win over another top club, the Ducks took last year’s Western Conference champs down to the wire in Edmonton.
“It’s a great team we played against and the second of a back-to-back [set] is tough, especially against Winnipeg in the first game,” Jackson LaCombe, who scored on the power play, told reporters. “I thought our team did a great job battling all night.”
Troy Terry, who scored in overtime Thursday and with 26 seconds left in regulation Dec. 18 to beat Winnipeg in both meetings so far this season, said the Ducks had been strengthening their resolve, having spent much of the offseason ruing their league-high 12 one-goal losses last season.
Coach Greg Cronin spoke on the trip of a palpable poise on the Ducks’ bench, even under adverse circumstances, but he also spoke of their “diggin’ and scrapin’ and clawin’” offensively. They’ve broken the four-goal barrier just 10 times in 37 games. Although they’re on pace to improve in the standings from 59 points last season to 78 points this year, they’re also on track for 13 one-goal losses and have a .444 winning percentage in one-goal games (Colorado has the NHL’s best success rate, .909).
The league’s worst team in one-goal games has been the Nashville Predators (.214), who outmaneuvered the Ducks to land former Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos, among others, in free agency. He has his lowest points-per-game average since he was an 18-year-rookie in 2008-09, with the Predators’ summer shopping spree sinking them like a stone in the standings.
Tampa Bay, on the other hand, has largely kept on keeping on, bringing in former Pittsburgh Penguins star Jake Guentzel to help fill the void left by the departure of Stamkos, their longtime leader who took them to Stanley Cup triumphs in 2020 and 2021, as well as to the Final in 2015 and 2022.
Nikita Kucherov headed into Saturday’s clash with the Kings tied for fourth in the NHL in scoring. He and his crew have beaten the Ducks in five straight meetings and eight of the last nine.
Tampa Bay at Ducks
When: 5 p.m. Sunday
Where: Honda Center
How to watch: Victory+, KCOP (Ch. 13)