Coming off a successful road trip, the fear was a slight let down by the Anaheim Ducks to be back on home ice.
The let down came in the middle frame Wednesday when the Chicago Blackhawks rallied form a 2-0 deficit to tie the game heading into the third period.
But Ondrej Kase struck at 4:03 of the third period to give the Ducks the lead.
“We’re feeling good about ourselves,” Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. “We’re not proclaiming we’re anything more than a work in progress.”
Anaheim improved to 15-10-5 and have won seven of their last eight games.
John Gibson made 25 saves to get win; he should credit his goal posts with assists for four Chicago shots ringing off the iron.
Alex DeBrincat and Erik Gustafsson scored for the Blackhawks.
“We are getting closer to the result we want,” DeBrincat said. “We just got to find a way to win some games.”
Chicago dropped to 9-15-5 and have lost five straight.
“You have to look at the positive,” Gustafsson said. “Even if you don’t score, just like I said, we hit four posts. Next game, maybe it goes in and we have four goals. We’ve got to stay positive.”
Daniel Sprong and Brandon Montour scored to build the 2-0 lead for the Ducks in the first period.
Jakob Silfverberg added an empty-net goal late, off a steal at center ice to seal the win.
“We’ve been doing a good job managing the puck,” Silfverberg said. “Our defense has been really good at not just throwing it into areas that are crowded when they get the puck. We take our time and make sure we come together. That’s the kind of speed we need. We need to create offense as a five-man unit up the ice.”
[WATCH: All Blackhawks vs. Ducks highlights]
Corey Crawford made 28 saves in taking the loss.
“We had a pretty good start and we’re down again, so that was tough. But maybe we stopped playing a couple minutes after that, after we went down, but I thought as the first period went on we showed some life again,” Chicago head coach Jeremy Colliton said.
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