Preview: Ducks Take Aim at Preds Tonight at Honda Center

The Ducks will look to close a short three-game homestand with a second straight win, tonight hosting the Nashville Predators at Honda Center.

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Anaheim snapped a four-game losing skid Thursday with one of its best performances of the season, a 5-1 thumping of the Penguins behind a three-goal third period.

"It was awesome, the team played really well," said Mason McTavish, who scored twice in the win and came about an inch from his first career hat trick. "It's obviously nice to see some goals go in and hopefully we can keep it up...We have a lot of talent in here. I think we've been a little bit snakebitten but we've just got to stick with it.

"We tried to stay above them the whole game and just compete. That's the biggest thing we want to focus on and that's what we've been doing every single game here. Like I said, we want to keep this up."

The win pushed the Ducks to 19-23-6 (44 points) on the season, nine points back of a Wild Card position with 34 games left to play, and also sparked an offense that had been struggling to produce.

"We have had a tough time scoring, so to get five is nice and to have every line contributing was great," said winger Alex Killorn. "Great game, [John Gibson] played well. We scored when we had to."

The Ducks also improved to 18-0-3 on the season when scoring at least three goals.

"[Pittsburgh] came out, they were flying," head coach Greg Cronin said. "It is hard to play that pace and intensity for 60 minutes. I think what happened was [Leo Carlsson's] line had some real quality chances to score and I think that broke the tension on the bench. We responded to that shift and I thought we kept it consistent throughout the game."

From one veteran opponent to another, the Ducks now host a suddenly red-hot Predators team determined to shake off a slow start and climb back into the playoff race. The Preds visit Orange County with wins in five straight games, most recently a pair of high-scoring victories, 6-5 and 7-5, over San Jose in a home-and-home set.

"We're finding ways to win in games where early in the season, we didn't," longtime Nashville winger Filip Forsberg told the team's Beat Reporter Brooks Bratten. "And certainly the effort is there. But there's definitely things…we can tighten up, but we'll take the positive. Excited for the win and get ready for the next game.”

Added head coach Andrew Brunette, "We're believing. We seem to get tighter as a group every game. We’ve got some things to clean up. We're still trying to stack some things...I think we're starting to understand when we do certain things and play a certain way, it’s fun to play, it's good to play. We're getting rewarded for it, so we’ll keep chipping away where we are and fight to keep that feeling.”

Nashville was the NHL's most aggressive team last season, adding free agents Jonathan Marchessault, Steven Stamkos and Brady Skjei on long-term contracts. Stamkos and Marchessault now skate on the club's top line with Forsberg, and each are among the team's top-four scoring leaders this season. Stamkos, a two-time champion with Tampa Bay, has scored five goals in his last five games.

The Predators (18-22-7, 43 points) sit seventh in the Central Division, 10 points behind a playoff position.