The Ducks were just tough enough
Some images stick in the mind, even a year later.
Ryan Getzlaf crunching Jake Virtanen with a crosscheck that resulted in a rib injury. And, in the same game, the Ducks behemoth treated Jared McCann like a piñata and rag-dolled him in a cornerboards confrontation mismatch as the Vancouver Canucks absorbed a sobering 4-0 loss in Anaheim.
The Ducks can play that intimidating way. They didn’t have to Thursday at Rogers Arena.
Rather than bashing bodies, they leaned on the Canucks and beat them to pucks, got on the cycle and got to the net in a 3-1 victory. In what was a litmus test for the Canucks — trying to win three straight since the start of this NHL season and climb back to the .500 bar — they did what they could, but their lack of overall team speed and experience was exposed against the league’s top faceoff club.
“We’re young and if we were picking our lineup, we wouldn’t be going with his group,” warned Canucks coach Willie Desjardins. “This will be a test for them.”
He was right. But it was the veteran first line that couldn’t get anything going in evenstrength matchups against Ryan Kesler and wingers Jakob Silfverberg and Andrew Cogliano. By the third period, Brandon Sutter was briefly replaced by Jayson Megna on the top alignment before Henrik Sedin would re-direct a Loui Eriksson pass with seven minutes left. But an Andrew Cogliano dribbler through Ryan Miller’s pads would end any suspense.
Earlier, Bo Horvat and Markus Granlund managed to draw penalties with strong rushes and Horvat was thwarted in the slot on the power play. A bigger mystery was 9:05 of ice time through two periods for the team’s leading scorer, but his line combined for just one shot through two periods. One of the most revealing stats lines of the night was the fact that Troy Stecher had seven of his nine shot attempts blocked. It was a tough lesson on a night when the Ducks made it just tough enough on everybody.