*Photo from the Orange County Register*
John Gibson has been one of the Anaheim Ducks best players for some time now. On Tuesday night, he showed exactly why that is the case. Gibson stopped all 31 shots that came his way, Danton Heinen scored the lone goal, and the Ducks beat the Arizona Coyotes by a 1-0 score, improving to 3-2-2 on the season. The Ducks have recorded at least one point in the standings in each of Gibson's last 4 starts.
Heinen scored the lone goal of the game for the Ducks, at the 10:59 mark of the first period, forcing a turnover and snapping one past Arizona goalie Darcy Kuemper, who stopped the other 23 shots that came his way.
Heinen explained what went in to his goal, saying that "I kind of tried to force it from there earlier, but it came back to me, so I thought just put it on net and luckily it went in. It's tough to score in this league. You've got to keep on shooting, keep on going to the net."
The Coyotes dropped to 1-4 in their last 5 games, despite controlling play in the offensive zone for long stretches of time during the game. In the second period, the Coyotes had the puck in the offensive zone for almost 3 consecutive minutes, raining down shots on Gibson. Unfortunately, he stopped them all.
Coyotes F Lawson Crouse said that "We ran into a hot goaltender. We're getting chances, it's just about capitalizing. We've got to do our best not to get frustrated and just keep at it. They're going to go in eventually."
Gibson's 21st career shut out had Heinen singing his praises after the game, saying that "I mean he's unbelievable. It shows why we have so much confidence in him back there. He just keeps you in games. He's a special goalie."
Arizona coach Rick Tocchet said of the team's performance that "Gibson is a great goalie but we've got to get in front of the net, try to get some shots through, some hard shots. We had the puck a lot tonight, but you've got to find a way to support it. Bottom line, we need some guys to score some goals."
Arizona and Anaheim will play again on Thursday, with Kuemper and Gibson expected to be the goalies again.
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