The Ducks open the season's final homestand tonight, hosting the Seattle Kraken on Legacy Night at Honda Center.
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Tonight's game features the third Legacy Night celebration of Anaheim's 30th Anniversary season, highlighted by a Mason McTavish bobblehead giveaway to the first 10,000 fans. For more on Legacy Night, click here.
Anaheim returns to home off looking to build on a 5-3 victory in Tuesday's road trip finale. The Ducks erased a one-goal second period deficit, leveling the score with a power-play tally and then taking full control in the third with goals from Cam Fowler and Alex Killorn less than four minutes apart.
"It feels good to win," Killorn said postgame. "We haven't done that in a long time and it's been tought. It's nice, especially at the end of the road trip, to go home with a good feeling.
"We started the trip not great against Seattle, but we kept building," Killorn said. "We played a great game in Vancouver but didn't win. Tuesday was a great team effort...Guys stepped up."
"I thought it was a gutsy win," head coach Greg Cronin added. "We were focused and did the right things when we got the lead...It was a good overall team effort."
With the win, the Ducks improved to 25-47-4 on the season and capped the northwest road trip at 1-4-0. Anaheim has six games remaining on its regular-season schedule, with four slated for Honda Center.
"We've got to build off how we played. We had a ton of scoring chances and we didn't play a ton of time in our defensive zone, which hasn't been the case throughout the year. We had a lot of offensive zone time. I really liked our possession game."
"It's hyperbole but it's true, [we] have to get better every day," Cronin said. "That's what we've been saying. We've had a couple clunks and we've had some really good games we haven't won. Tuesday we played well enough to win and we won."
Anaheim's early offense in the win mostly started on the stick of rookie defenseman Olen Zellweger, who finished the night with three assists, nine shot attempts and a +1 rating in 18:19 of ice-time.
"I think it's been kind of a coming-out party for him these last two games," Killorn said. "He's playing a lot of minutes now and you can tell that he's gained a lot of confidence. He had three assists and the first goal the other night. I think it's just going to keep going up for him."
With four points in his last two outings, Zellweger now sits seventh among rookie blueliners in points per game.
"It's been a really good learning process for me," Zellweger said. "I played the first half of the year in the [American Hockey League] and learned a lot. Now this is another adjustment for me. I'm trying to learn as much as I can and make the best impression I can heading into next year."
Zellweger and the Ducks now reunite with the division rival Kraken, hoping for a better result this go around than a pair of consecutive defeats last week in the Emerald City.
“I think the work ethic was there, but we took ourselves out of the game by taking way too many penalties,” winger Jakob Silfverberg said of the matchups vs. Seattle. “Especially in the [second game], we have a 2-1 game, and then we just have a parade going to the box. Obviously, that’s not going to make your case easier for winning games."
Seattle has lost two of three games since the wins over Anaheim, most recently a 5-2 setback Wednesday night against LA. The Kraken fell behind 3-0 by the midway mark of the second period and could not mount a comeback in the third despite an early power-play goal by winger Andre Burakovsky.
The loss eliminated Seattle from playoff contention.
“We’re playing for other things here,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol told NHL.com's Dan Greenspan. “We’re disappointed with the outcome. We left some of our effort on the table. Again, I don’t think our effort was poor, but we left too much in the tank here today.”
Seattle (31-31-13) now sits sixth in the Pacific Division.
