In San Jose Saturday night, Anton Khudobin made 31 saves and Corey Perry scored in the first period to lead the Ducks to a 1-0 win over the Sharks.
It was the fourth straight win for the Ducks.
“It’s big,” defenseman Cam Fowler said of winning in San Jose. “You have to prove to yourself and to the guys on the team that you can come into hostile environments and get wins when you need them, which we do right now. Because come playoff time you don’t want to have bad thoughts in your head about going into a building.
“These guys have taken it to us pretty good the last year, year and a half. So we’ll take this win now. It’s early in the season, there’s plenty of room for improvement, but it’s a great win for our team right now.”
It was one of the more complete games by Anaheim this season even if the offense was still dragging up the red lantern.
“It’s been a long time,” Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I don’t think I ever won when I was in Washington, in this building. I know it’s difficult because they just keep coming. They’re a really, really good team. So we just got to make sure that now that we’ve done it we can do it again.”
Martin Jones made 16 saves in taking the loss.
“The first 10 minutes they had the jump on us,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “We were standing around watching. I don’t know why. From that point on I thought we played a [heck] of a game. Our goalie was great. We put a lot of pressure on them, put a lot of shots on net, a lot of opportunities.”
Anaheim improved to 5-7-2 while the Sharks fell to 7-7-0.
“It’s just not going in the net,” Patrick Marleau said. “We got a lot of shots, traffic in front, a few tips. The goalie made some saves through traffic. We’ve just got to stick with it, keep shooting pucks and being hungry.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.