On the heels of their best performance of the season, the Anaheim Ducks will try to keep surging when they visit the Pittsburgh Penguins in the opener of a five-game road trip on Tuesday night.
The Ducks beat the visiting Chicago Blackhawks 7-1 on Sunday evening to wrap up a three-game homestand that began with a 7-0 loss to the Utah Mammoth last Wednesday. In between, Anaheim knocked off the Washington Capitals 4-3 in a shootout.
“We want to look at creating a standard of consistency and predictability in our game,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said.
The Ducks have remained atop the Pacific Division for three weeks, even after losing their top two goalies to injuries.
Ville Husso has stepped in and won four of his five starts in net. Quenneville likes Husso’s composure, patience, size and puck-handling.
“He came in at an interesting time with our season and stabilized that position,” Quenneville said. “It’s been noticeable.”
Beckett Sennecke continues to have a remarkable rookie season as well.
He had a goal and an assist against the Blackhawks to give him 24 points on the season, which leads all NHL rookies. Sennecke has 12 points in his past 11 games (three goals, nine assists).
“He’s only going to get stronger,” Quenneville said. “He’s long and he’s got that reach and he’s deceptive and he can put it in different areas and not lose momentum when he’s getting it back up to where he needs it. He’s tricky.”
Quenneville said the one area he’d like to see improvement is making the right decisions off the rush.
“You don’t always have to make a perfect play off the rush and pass it through sticks and skates,” he said. “You can get it in behind people, and with good pressure, we can hunt down pucks. I think our D has had good gaps off our forecheck, our pursuit’s been good, we’ve got good speed on our team and, so, if we can utilize it on our forecheck, it can help disrupt their exits, which kind of leads to a good rush game.”
The Penguins will be looking to pick up momentum as well in the opener of a five-game homestand.
Pittsburgh is coming off a 3-2 shootout loss at the Dallas Stars on Sunday to wrap up a three-game trip. The Penguins were two minutes away from sweeping the road trip, but gave up the tying goal with 1:49 remaining against Dallas.
“You walk away disappointed based on that game,” Penguins coach Dan Muse said. “I thought the overall game that we played, we wanted to come away with two points. Once we look at it, get a little bit removed from it, I think we’ll see that there were a lot of positives. Those points are important and there’s some things that, obviously, we could have done, too, that could have secured those two points.”
Pittsburgh is right in the middle of a tightly packed race in the Metropolitan Division. They won’t play any division foes on the homestand, however, instead taking on the Montreal Canadiens, San Jose Sharks, Utah Mammoth and Edmonton Oilers over the next seven days.
“I think we played two pretty good games (on the road trip),” Penguins forward Tommy Novak said. “Just try to keep our consistency. I think we’ve shown that we can play with anybody. That’s a good team (Sunday) night, again, so when we’re playing our best, we’re tough to beat.”
