Road Warriors
While it was a road trip that helped the Anaheim Ducks establish some positive momentum, they’ll need to find a way to translate that success to home ice as they face a team that has had plenty of success on the road this season.
In a matchup of the last two Stanley Cup champions, the Ducks will try to win their fifth straight overall as they open a three-game homestand against the Detroit Red Wings, who are perfect in five road games thus far.
Oddsmakers from SBG Global have made Detroit -125 money line favorites (NHL Odds) for today’s game, the over/under has been set at 5.5 goals (Matchup). Current public betting information shows that 73% of bets for this game have been placed on Detroit -125 (View NHL Bet Percentages).
Anaheim (5-5-0) opened this season with four straight losses, and that sluggish stretch was part of a 1-5-0 start in which it dropped three of four at home, where it went 28-9-4 in 2007-08.
But the Ducks have found their stride away from Honda Center, winning all four games on a recent road trip that was capped by Monday night’s 3-2 victory at Columbus.
Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf each had a goal and an assist, while Teemu Selanne scored the go-ahead goal with 3:55 left as the Ducks evened their record by sweeping a road trip of four games or longer for the second time in franchise history.
"There was a lot at stake for our hockey club to get back to .500," Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. "After a rough start, now we’re at .500. … We’re just going to savor this for about 10 minutes."
Carlyle’s club now meets a Red Wings squad that has won all five of its road games, and the first two contests of its current five-game swing.
Valtteri Filppula scored the tying goal with 1:54 remaining in regulation, and Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg converted in the shootout as Detroit (7-1-1) beat Los Angeles 4-3 on Monday night for its second straight shootout win and fifth straight victory overall.
Though the Red Wings are among the highest-scoring clubs in the NHL with 35 goals, seven of their nine games have been decided by one goal.
"It was a tight game. They played a good solid defense, they were backing up pretty good and took advantage of our mistakes," said Zetterberg, who has five goals and is tied for fourth on the team with eight points. "But I think we still played a little better defense tonight and didn’t let them shoot that much. So that was progress."
The defending Stanley Cup champions have taken advantage of their power-play opportunities, scoring once in five chances on Monday to improve to 12-for-37 (32.4 percent) this season. They have prevented 35 of 43 (81.4 percent) of their opponents’ chances with the man advantage, turning aside five of six in their last game.
The Ducks haven’t been nearly as impressive on special teams as they have converted just five of 36 chances (13.9 percent) with the man advantage, and have allowed opponents to score 10 times in 59 tries (16.9 percent) while short-handed.
Anaheim’s Jean-Sebastian Giguere helped killed all six of his team’s penalties in the last game, and finished with 30 saves to improve to 4-4-0 with a 2.86 goals-against average in eight starts. However, he has compiled a 2.56 GAA in losing six of his last 10 matchups versus the Red Wings.
Detroit’s Chris Osgood is 12-3-0 with two ties and a 2.50 GAA in 17 career games versus the Ducks.
Anaheim and Detroit split last season’s four-game series, and the Ducks won once in two home games.
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