John Gibson has had some major issues of late and has been pulled form games as the Anaheim Ducks have been on a four-game skid; on Wednesday night he made 37 saves to help the Ducks defeat their hosts, the St Louis Blues.
The Ducks built a 3-0 lead before holding on for the win.
Antoine Vermette struck twice and Kevin Roy had a goal as the Ducks improved to 11-10-4.
“We need him (Gibson( and we wanted to come out and play well in front of him,” Vermette said. “Tonight, he stood up big for us.”
The Ducks were coming off a dismal loss to the Chciago Blackhawks and played a solid game and fed off the Gibson effort.
“When you get thumped like we did, you look for a response from your group, and we knew that we could play a lot better brand of hockey and we knew we could be competitive,” Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle said. “You can’t go out and say you’re going to win every game, but we did not give ourselves a chance [Monday], and tonight, we gave ourselves a chance to do that, to win a hockey game.”
Kyle Brodziak scored both Blues goals late in the third period to make the score respectable.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Brodziak said. “We’re getting scored on quite a bit all year, basically. Early on, we were getting scored on, and that might have hurt the confidence. It felt like we were starting to get it back together, but the last few games, same thing. We give up two more tonight. It’s really the story of the game pretty much.
“… A game like tonight, penalty kill could have found a way to win a game for us. Instead, we found a way to lose a game for us tonight.”
[WATCH:Â All Ducks vs. Blues highlights]
Jake Allen made 27 saves to take the loss.
“Maybe we were looking at what they were missing (injured key skaters in the Ducks lineup). I don’t know. Obviously, we talked about it and we tried to address it. We knew after their last outing that they were going to come out hard, check hard, but we didn’t match their desperation,” Blues head coach Mike Yeo said after the loss.
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