Takeaways from Anaheim Ducks Win Over Sabres

After a very miraculous and violent game on Wednesday night, the Anaheim Ducks came out on top 5-2 against the then 5-0-1 Buffalo Sabres. It was the first time this season that the Ducks managed to score more than three goals, and they did it in convincing fashion against the top team in the league.

Despite the worst first period of the season, the Ducks triumphed an early 2-0 deficit by playing hard and throwing on the body. But is that necessarily the best way to go about this young season? And can this Ducks team manage to score over three goals more than once? Let’s start with what to take away from this game and work our way into judging this game.

Improvement by the Minute

At the beginning of the game, things were looking pretty awful for the Anaheim Ducks. They already found themselves down by two with an incredibly shaky defense barely skating enough to keep out a third goal. John Gibson was carrying the team on his back, and the offense just wasn’t cutting it. But unlike the Ducks of last season, this team actually started to improve and build confidence as the game went on instead of quitting early.

At one point in the first, the Ducks were being out-shot eighteen to nine, and that’s a pretty good idea of how bad their play was throughout the first. However, shot attempts and better offensive placement built up throughout the second, and Anaheim scored three unanswered goals just in that period. The way that head coach Dallas Eakins keeps this team afloat by instilling confidence and a no-quit attitude is incredible, and the results are very clear.

By the third period, Buffalo looked absolutely lethargic, and they were playing like the second-half Sabres of last season. With Anaheim taking all that momentum, there wasn’t anything left for their opposition to take, and that’s a valuable asset for this team to have. They are playing up to the standard that makes other teams give up. If the defense and the offense works together like they did by the end of the game in every game, this team will be a very threatening one.

Blossoming Offense

For this Anaheim Ducks team that came dead last in the league last season in goals for, they sure didn’t show any signs of repeating that this season. Adam Henrique tallied two out of the five goals, and he was just on fire. When he was on the ice, the team was just playing magnificently. And the Ducks finally managed to solve their power play woes together with a Ryan Getzlaf goal.

In every asset of their game, the offense was amazing after the first period. Out of the five goals scored, only one of them was left up to luck, and that was Jakob Silfverberg‘s empty-netter that went off a glove into the net. This is the kind of offense that Anaheim is capable of, and it’s not too greedy to expect this kind of play more often. Even if it’s three goals per game, that’s a major improvement from last season.

Getting Physical

Surprisingly enough, this was one of the more violent games that the Anaheim Ducks have played in the past few seasons. It seems pretty unwarranted against a team like Buffalo, but both the Ducks and Sabres were getting pretty angry at each other. In total, there were twenty-one penalties assessed to these teams, and twelve of those went towards Anaheim. The fighting was plentiful, and that took up a lot of those penalty minutes.

Nick Ritchie was doing his usual shtick and taking absolutely brain-dead penalties, but there were at least a few fights and penalties that were acceptable. The Ducks need to watch out for how much time they’re spending in the box, but considering that Eakins has kept the team relatively calm and sharp already this season, it isn’t a major worry just yet.

Good or Bad?

When judging if this was a good or bad game for Anaheim, the good seems to outweigh the bad. The offense looked the best they’ve looked all season, the defense started to really clamp down, and Gibson was as stellar as always. The worst parts of this game were the occasional bad penalty or the absolute garbage play that the Ducks put out there in the first period. This team has to find a better way to get off to great starts instead of taking it easy and ramping it up towards the end. If they allow too many mistakes in the first, the game is over much quicker than anyone wants.

Nonetheless, this was a very good game for the Anaheim Ducks, and if they can fix the two most negative aspects of this game while maintaining their best performance so far, keeping up this stellar record won’t be too hard. And they’ll have to use these words of advice tonight against the Carolina Hurricanes if they want to keep up that aforementioned record.

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