*Photo from TSN*
The Ducks were flying around the ice. Frank Vatrano had a goal and two assists, Mason McTavish scored twice, and the Anaheim Ducks defeated the Ottawa Senators with a 5-1 victory on Thursday night in Ottawa.
Coming off a 5 goal shutout loss to the Montreal Canadiens, the Ducks responded with 5 goals of their own against Ottawa. The Ducks got two assists from Troy Terry and Ryan Strome while McTavish had a two goal game. Vatrano and Fowler each had 3 point games with a goal and two assists each.
Anaheim head coach Greg Cronin said of the win that "Offensively, I think we were very opportunistic. We had some cycles where we kept it in their zone for a bit, but not enough for me. I thought they controlled the puck more than we did on those cycles. I thought our transition game was good and I felt the emphasis today was to defend, and I thought we defended hard."
Pavel Mintyukov scored the only goal of the first period, giving the Ducks a 1-0 lead with Terry and Leo Carlsson assisting. Fowler and Strome assisted on Vatrano's power play goal in the second period, his 23rd of the season. McTavish scored his 14th goal of the season with 1:01 left in the period, making it a 3-0 game.
McTavish scored his second goal of the night 2:18 into the 3rd period, with Terry and Fowler assisting to make it 4-0 Ducks. Claude Giroux ended the shutout bid by scoring for the Senators to make it a 4-1 game. On the power play 9:23 into the period, Fowler scored with help from Strome and Vatrano to make it a 5-1 final score.
Fowler said of McTavish's two goals that "When he's at his best, I think he's involved physically like that. He's really a prototypical power forward, so he was mixing it up all night and then got on the score sheet a couple of times. I'm sure he's pumped, and he helped the team win, but it was a big night for him as well."
Getting the start in goal for the Ducks was John Gibson, who got the win to improve to 11-19-1 on the season. Gibson stopped all 15 shots he faced before departing after the second period with an upper body injury. Lukas Dostal came on for the 3rd period and faced 19 shots, stopping 18 of them.
It was Joonas Korpisalo who started between the pipes for the Senators, taking the loss as his record fell to 13-17-2 in 31 starts. Korpisalo turned aside 15 out of the 20 shots on goal the Ducks sent his way, good for a paltry .750 save percentage.
Ottawa interim head coach Jacques Martin said of the loss that "I just didn't think our compete level was high enough. But give them credit; they outworked us, they worked hard, they were on the puck. We didn't have time and space. It's a team that obviously, they had lost badly the last game, had a hard practice yesterday and they got the message. We had a good stretch going, so I think that we've just got to regroup."
Both teams get back in action on Saturday with road contests. The Ducks are likely to start Dostal against the Toronto Maple Leafs while Korpisalo is Ottawa's projected starter when they take on the Chicago Blackhawks.
Comments
Post a Comment