Leo Carlsson will make his NHL debut tonight as the Ducks continue their 30th Anniversary season with a matchup against the Dallas Stars at Honda Center.
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With Carlsson in the lineup for the first time, the Ducks will look for their second straight victory over a projected Stanley Cup contender, tonight battling a former division rival who finished last season with 108 points and a trip to the Western Conference Final.
"We're going to have our hands full, obviously," Ducks head coach Greg Cronin said. "I think we learned from [the games against] Vegas and Carolina...We'll adjust and try to play the way we need to play to have a visibile identity."
The Ducks downed the Carolina Hurricanes Sunday in the club's 30th Anniversary season home opener, racing out an early 3-0 lead before the end of the first period and sealing the deal late on Frank Vatrano's hat trick goal into the empty net in front of a racous, sold-out crowd.
"I think we've played two top-five teams in the league. Those aren't easy games," Vatrano said. "Especially back-to-back against a team like Carolina. They're not easy to play against and we showed up."
"For me, the big positive was we kept them to the outside and we had a lot of blocked shots," Cronin said. "That's gonna be a lot of third periods, it's a style in the NHL. People throw everything at you and I thought we did a good job weathering the storm."
Carlsson will make his debut tonight, expected to play center alongside Troy Terry and Trevor Zegras. The 18-year-old Swede will become the third-youngest Duck to appear in an NHL regular-season game, trailing only Oleg Tverdovsky and Mason McTavish. Carlsson is also set to become just the fourth top-two draft selection to play for the Ducks, joining Tverdovsky, Bobby Ryan and Chris Pronger.
"He's 18 years old, but he thinks the game like a 25-year-old," Cronin said. "I'm really impressed with his strength, because he's not an overly thick guy, on puck battles...I don't like to get too confident about predictions, but from what I've seen, if he manages it the right way and continues to grow from where he is now, he's going to be a heck of a player."
Carlsson will join of group of young Ducks already becoming a big part of the team's lineup. Rookie defenseman Pavel Mintyukov made his NHL debut Saturday in Vegas, 24 hours before scoring his first NHL goal on a sweet setup pass by fellow rookie blueliner Jackson LaCombe.
"Maybe there was a bit of nervousness from us to start but right away we tried to get in the play and make plays," LaCombe said. "There are a lot of things I still need to work on, especially defensively, so I'm trying to learn from it and go forward.
"We're learning to defend in new ways. Teams are going to be coming fast so it's about getting our gaps tight, being physical and keeping them to the outside. Those are big keys for us."
That defense will be put to the test against a potent Dallas attack looking to break out after a quiet first two games of the new season. The Stars opened the 2023-24 campaign with a 2-1 shootout win over the Blues, but fell in similar fashion to the Golden Knights five days later.
"They played Vegas and it was a heavy game," Cronin said. "Both of those teams are very similar in the style they play."
“You hate losing a 2-1 lead with five minutes left in the game, but it was a good learning opportunity,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer told club Senior Staff Writer Mike Heika. “The more games you play, your experience will get better and we’ve got a stretch of games here where we’re going to get the opportunity to do that.”
Southern California native Jason Robertson, whose hat trick against Anaheim last season was part of a 46-goal, 109-point campaign, is among those Stars still trying to get going offensively. The 24-year-finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting a year ago, but has been held of the scoresheet in each of Dallas' first two games.
“I think at this point in the season, we want to correct everything we can - look at the bad stuff and the things we need to improve on, because we hold ourselves to a high standard,” Robertson told Heika. “It’s only two games into the year, it’s going to be a long season, and what we need to do is focus on [tonight].”
