Bruce Boudreau was triumphant in his return as the Wild down the Anaheim Ducks.
The current Minnesota bench boss decided to employ his big weapons to celebrate the occasion, starting star goaltender Devan Dubnyk in the second half of a back-to-back.
His struggles in the past few games have been well documented but it doesn’t change the fact that the former Vezina finalist has had a remarkable season.
Unfortunately for the Ducks, he had clutch stops and made the saves that had to be made.
In a 4-3 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Kings the day before, back-up Darcy Kuemper fulfilled the net minding duties.
Game in a nutshell:
WEEEE pic.twitter.com/rwdaFgluNL
— NBC Sports Hockey (@NBCSportsHockey) January 9, 2017
Matched:
The noticeable advantage in winning draws have been a key ingredient to having points on the board.
But for every Ryan Kesler and Antoine Vermette, Minnesota had Charlie Coyle and Erik Haula.
Coyle had four wins in seven tries against the Anaheim Ducks leading scorer, three of them in the neutral zone.
A Dried Well:
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It was 5v5 play that haunted Anaheim to begin the season and now their special teams have taken a hit.
The Anaheim Ducks have gone 0-for-13 on the man advantage in the past five games.
The PK units deployed led by Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Suter have been effective but one shot on goal in unacceptable.
And yet we are somehow still ranked 5th in the league.
Help Yourself:
You have to eliminate any low hanging fruit and not give teams a chance to take advantage of your mistakes.
The Anaheim Ducks inability to keep up with teams on the fly have resulted in 37 hooking penalties.
Matt Dumba scored during the 5-on-3 power play early in the second to tie the game as a result.
A play-off berth can not be achieved if you’re stuck in the limbo of mediocrity.
Here was Andrew Cogliano’s thoughts via the team website:
"“Mentally, we have to prepare ourselves better. We made some uncharacteristic mistakes in the d-zone. We gave them an easy goal and took a penalty, and they scored at the end of it.”"
Lack of Depth:
It is going to be interesting to see how GM Bob Murray goes about fixing this problem with the trade deadline approaching.
There are just three players that are in double figures for goals and the Anaheim Ducks might just be the first team in NHL history that runs just two lines.
Sunday night was just another game where we wish we had the services of Ryan Getzlaf at our disposal.
We had a lot of struggles of entering the zone and his playmaking abilities to stretch the defense would have alleviated some pressure.