In Anaheim, the Ducks won their first regulation game of the year, appropriately against the New York Rangers who are the gifts that keep giving this season.
John Gibson made 41 saves for the Ducks win.
“We just wanted to win a hockey game, and I’ve got to steal some games every now and then,” Gibson said. “Finally, we said enough is enough and were able to get the win tonight.”
Anaheim moved to 6-13-2.
The Rangers finished a four-game West roadie with a 2-1-1 record.
“We played really well. We hit [two] goal posts,” New York coach Gerard Gallant said. “We had lots of opportunities, and Gibson obviously stood on his head, so I can’t fault the performance. Just disappointing we didn’t get any points out of it, but we played hard, we played well, [and] if you play like that, you’re going to win a lot of those games.”
New York dropped to 10-7-4.
Barclay Goodrow and Braden Schneider were the Rangers strikers.
Goodrow gave them a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“We’ve got to be less sloppy,” New York forward Vincent Trocheck said. “Those first two periods weren’t very good. We’ve been saying it for a while now, we’ve got to get a full 60 minutes out of us.”
The Ducks replied with three straight.
Dmitry Kulikov, Mason McTavish, and Troy Terry scored for Anaheim.
“It’s a tough league to score in,” McTavish said. “Any goal you can get, everyone’s pretty fired up.”
Terry’s goal gave the Ducks a 3-1 lead.
“Those two goals were shots that you don’t necessarily think they’re super high percentage when you shoot them, but all these top teams throw everything to the net,” Terry said. “You saw that on Kulikov’s goal and then mine, same kind of thing.”
Jaroslav Halak made 19 saves in the Rangers loss, his record dropped to 0-5-1.
“I’m sure that second goal he’s not happy about,” Gallant said of Halak. “He’s a veteran guy, he’s won a lot of hockey games in his career. We’ll get some wins for him.”
Maybe Halak needs to get some wins FOR the Rangers?
“The way we’ve been playing on this road trip, we wanted to close it out with a win, but just have to build on it,” New York’s Mika Zibanejad said.
Can’t do that if your goalie does not have your back.
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