The Ducks will return from the 4 Nations Face-Off break at the site of the tournament's dramatic finale, tonight facing off with the Boston Bruins at TD Garden.
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Anaheim resumes its season looking to pick up where it left off, as the Ducks hit the break with wins in six of seven games to pull within striking distance of the Western Conference postseason race.
"The games are going to get tougher and tougher," veteran forward Ryan Strome said. "It's something we'll need to figure out as a team. The last few years, at this point in the season, we've been out of it. So we have to understand the games are going to tighten up. A lot of them will be like the last few we've had, 2-1 or 3-1. They're going to be tight games and we need to find ways to win. It'll be good for our team to experience that challenge over the next 28 games as a group."
The Ducks now stand at 24-24-6 on the season, nine points back of a Wild Card position.
"It'll be good to ramp it up here," Strome said. "If we can continue to get spread-out offense and have good special teams, we've had great goaltending all year, those are the keys. Just need to keep going and try to build on this momentum. We want to build some confidence within the group and figure out what this set of games feels like."
"It's a necessary part of the rebuild," added head coach Greg Cronin. "We're nine points back. We just have to keep putting the wins together like we did before the break. The closer you are to that spot, the more playoff-type experience you're going to get, so it's a critical part of our growth as a group. We're getting familiar with what meaningful games represent."
Anaheim's lone participant in the 4 Nations Face-Off was second-year center Leo Carlsson, who skated for Team Sweden in a 2-1 victory over the United States. The Ducks reconvened for a couple days of practice earlier this week at Great Park Ice before departing for the east coast, looking to shake off any rust from the week-long layoff.
"Have to make sure we're in shape after the days away and the second thing is timing," Cronin said. "Game timing is critical. You can't really duplicate the game timing in practice but you try to have competitive drills where they have to get used to battling again and fighting for pucks in small areas...We have it programmed in our DNA what we're doing systems-wise."
Meanwhile, on the other side tonight is a Bruins squad suddenly missing one of its top players after an unusual injury to star defender Charlie McAvoy. The Team USA standout, who played a critical role in the Americans' round-robin victory over Canada, suffered an AC joint ailment and a subsequent infection that would require hospital attention. McAvoy was released from the hospital but is not expected to return to action "in the short term", according to Bruins head coach Joe Sacco.
“As far as we’re concerned, first and foremost we’re concerned with Charlie’s health,” Sacco told the team's Eric Russo following Wednesday's practice. “We just want to wish him the best moving forward here in his recovery. That’s the main concern for us right now. The incident is unlucky, but we want to wish him the best with his health moving forward…we’ll see where it goes from there.
“We’re planning that we have a game without him on Saturday. We’ve got to do our best to get our guys that are here ready for that game coming up on Saturday...He seems to be doing better which is a good sign, but we just want to see him recover from what happened first and then we’ll go from there.”
The Bruins are also without former Ducks defenseman Hampus Lindholm, who has not played since breaking his leg on a blocked shot in early November.
Boston hit the break with losses in consecutive games to Vegas and the New York Rangers, falling just behind Detroit for the final Eastern Conference Wild Card position.
"We are not in position to look past next game the way we are in the standings," Bruins winger David Pastrnak said. "We have to take it game by game. We need every single point so don’t look too far, make sure we give ourselves a chance every game to win and grab the points, those games can go fast. It’s important to stay in the moment.”
Boston (27-24-6, 60 points) sits sixth in the Atlantic Division.
