Preview: Ducks Host Wild on Military Appreciation Night at Honda Center

The Ducks continue a four-game homestand tonight, hosting the Minnesota Wild on Military Appreciation Night at Honda Center.
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Tonight's game will be broadcast live in-market on Bally Sports West and nationally on TNT.
The night will pay tribute to local military, as well as raise awareness and funds for United Heroes League (UHL), a nonprofit organization that provides the children of military members access to sports. The first 10,000 fans in attendance will receive an exclusive Ducks military dad hat presented by Pacific Premier Bank.
Ducks players will also wear commemorative jerseys during the pregame warmup, which will be auctioned starting at 5 p.m. Lieutenant Colonel Trevor Phillips of the California Army National Guard will drop the puck in a pregame ceremony at center ice.
Anaheim enters play Wednesday sitting seventh in the Pacific Division (4-8-1, .346), but with a 2-2-0 mark on home ice. The club suffered its second home setback of the season Sunday, falling 5-3 to the Florida Panthers. The Ducks scored twice in 27 seconds midway through the second period and pulled within a goal on Isac Lundestrom's late penalty shot tally, but could not find the equalizer to force overtime against the reigning Presidents' Trophy winners.
"I think we're not doing a good enough job with forechecking," said Ryan Strome, who led Anaheim with a two-point night. "In the second period we had a couple of good shifts where it was 'Shot, rebound, shot, recover,' but it's not consistent enough. If you watch [Florida's] game, their shot totals are volume, volume, volume, break. Ours are kind of one and done. When that happens,
that's what happens with the shot totals."

Anaheim fell behind 2-0 early in that loss, dropping to 2-5-1 on the season when conceding the game's first goal.
"You can just look around the league and you score the first goal, the odds swing in your favor to win right away," head coach Dallas Eakins said. "[Sunday], we come off a road trip, it's a back-to-back and that's how we played the first period, and we
can't do it. We can't use excuses. We've got to be ready to go.
Eakins said he was encouraged by the club's second period response, but added the next step is seeing it more consistently.
"The second period is a period that we're very capable of and a period that we need to play each and every period," Eakins said. "That's how we have to play and we show spurts of it which shows that you can do it. The challenge is to choose to do it each and every shift, every period. That's what we have to do.
"[Consistency] is a choice for me. It's a choice that you're not going to take that route of being good or mediocre. You're going to take that route, 'I'm going to be a high-achiever and I'm going to be a champion.' Just coming in and having a good day, that's not good enough when you're at where we're at. You have to come in and win today. Have an excellent day. Do everything you have to do to get better. I think when you have a start like this, people start looking around going 'who's coming to help?'… It has to be you before us."
Anaheim hosts a Minnesota team looking to bounce back after a 1-0 shutout loss last night to Los Angeles. The teams went nearly 54 minutes without a goal, until Gabriel Vilardi netted the game-winner with 6:03 to play, dropping the Wild to 5-6-1 on the season.
"We played a real good game, a real strong game in all areas," head coach Dean Evason said. "Penalty kill was excellent. Obviously that starts with [goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury]. Our committment to blocking shots and keeping pucks out of our net was fantastic. We did a lot of good things in this game...Our group played well enough, I hate to say deserved better, but we should have been in a better position at the end."
The Wild (5-6-1) are tied for fifth place in the Central Division.