On Friday night in Calgary, the Anaheim Ducks found their offense in a 6-3 win. Saturday evening had the Ducks rediscovering their defense and goaltending in a 2-1 win over the Oilers.
Ryan Getzlaf scored with 7:14 left in the third to left the Ducks to the win.
“Any points right now are big,” Getzlaf said. “Nobody is going to roll over and give you anything down the stretch; you have to earn it. I thought we did a lot of good things tonight. We had a few breakdowns, but mostly we kept everything to the outside, and our goaltender played good.
“We’ve been trying to get to the net more aggressively. When you are having trouble scoring goals, that’s what you need to do. We got a lucky bounce there at the end.”
John Gibson made 26 saves in the game for the win and only allowed a goal to Teddy Purcell in the second period.
The stat that continues to impress with the Ducks is their success in one-goal games. They are now 25-0-7 in those slimmest of margins.
“The second night in back-to-back games for both teams, it is just a mental battle,” Ducks defenseman Ben Lovejoy said. “Your legs just don’t have quite the same jump and you have to be mentally sharp, and I think we were tonight. I really credit our forwards for the way we have been able to turn things around of late. They have gone to work grinding. They are impossible to stop when they want to keep the puck down low.”
Francois Beauchemin lasered a shot from the blue line in the first period that beat Ben Scrivens through a screen for a 1-0 Ducks lead.
“After the first five or six minutes, I thought it was going to be a long night,” Oilers coach Todd Nelson said. “We didn’t manage the puck that well. We didn’t settle in until about six or seven minutes into the period. But once we settled in, I thought we played a strong game.
“The rest of the way we had some great effort tonight; it was a good bounce-back game for our hockey team. It was one of those things where we had some opportunities that we didn’t bury, and they were able to get one in the third period.”
But it was Getzlaf’s marker in the third made the difference off a scramble in front.
“It felt like it was underneath me and kind of got jammed away, but those are the breaks,” Scrivens said. “We had a bad start again, they really took it to us in the first five or seven minutes, but we responded well. Big goal by Teddy to start the second, and it was back and forth the rest of the way. It’s unfortunate we didn’t get the result but the effort was there.”
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