SEATTLE – Without its top stars–and even before Leo Carlsson, Troy Terry and Mason McTavish went down–the Anaheim Ducks have preached a full team game to spark this winning streak, and Friday night at Climate Pledge Arena might have been the most thorough team effort of them all.
The Ducks scored at even strength, shorthanded, on the power play and into an empty net to support another sharp third period from their netminder to close out a 4-2 win over the Seattle Kraken, securing a massive four-point swing in an air-tight playoff race.
After pulling out of a nine-game winless skid, Anaheim has won six in a row–its second-best streak of the season after a seven-game streak in November.
“We just talked about this at the beginning of the year. We want to be the hardest working team,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. “That wants to be our identity. We want to have a check-first mentality. I think we had a different look at us in the beginning of the year, where we could score goals (at) it looked like at a higher rate than anybody would have thought, including us.”
“Might have got a little carried away with thinking that’s how you’re going to be successful and win. I think we got more prepared to play without the puck, and that commitment has been noticeable, and results speak for themselves.”
Cutter Gauthier scored his team-leading 23rd goal just 62 seconds in by burning a Seattle defender on the right wing and shooting far side, and Ryan Poehling doubled the lead with a shorthanded goal later in the opening period.
Seattle scored off the rush to open the second period, but Chris Kreider swiped in a power play goal to match. The Kraken put their foot on the gas to open the third period with another transition marker, but Lukas Dostál made 10 saves in the final frame of his 22 in the game to lock down the victory. Pavel Mintyukov angled a shot off the boards into the empty net to seal it.
“The first two periods, they just couldn’t keep up with us,” Poehling said. “We played so fast. We were on top of them. Great sticks, and we made it really hard, and then the last period, they kind of came back out to their game, and I thought we we kind of got the gas a little bit, but no, I thought we played a great team game, and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing the last few games. It’s been why we’re winning.”
Anaheim (27-21-3, 57 points) kept pace in a fast-moving Pacific Division and Western Conference wild card race.
The Ducks remained five points back of division-leading Vegas but are now just one point back of second-place Edmonton (25-19-8, 58 points). Anaheim is at the Oilers on Monday. The Ducks still hold a two-point lead over wild-card San Jose (26-21-3, 55 points) and moved to four points up on Seattle (22-19-9, 53 points) and Los Angeles (20-16-13, 53 points).
Anaheim continues its five-game northwestern road trip in Calgary on Sunday.
It has been a struggle at times for Anaheim to get games started on the right foot, with the Ducks 29th in the NHL games scoring first and fourth in the league in games trailing first.
However, over their last 10 games, the Ducks are second in the league in games scoring first (seven) and scored first in each of the first two games of this road trip.
It helps when Gauthier has the wheels he does to blow by defenders, as he did in the opening minute to set off he and new linemate Jeffrey Viel on surprising three-game point streaks.
“It’s just his speed and shot, you know?” said Poehling, the center of that clicking line combination. “Like, not a lot of guys can do both, you know? And he’s one of those guys that at any given moment, he can be a game breaker. So, I mean, you saw it there right away and he’s very special player, and he’s fun to play with.”
In the first period, eight Ducks players finished the opening 20 minutes with a staggering 100% expected goals share at five-on-five, with Gauthier, Poehling, Viel’s line leading the way at 0.57-0.00 xGF.
“I think just being defensively sound,” Gauthier said as the key to the overwhelming team game. “And I think another one is just our neutral zone forecheck. Sometimes you get a little too aggressive, which exposes the opposing team speed, and when we lock that down, it frustrates teams and they end up giving us the puck.”
With the Ducks’ roster shorthanded of its top talents, those early starts will continue to be imperative to let Anaheim establish this rediscovered checking game and not have to break that structure to force comeback efforts.
Anaheim’s man-down unit continues to exemplify the attention-to-details defense that has sparked this six-game win streak.
Over the Ducks’ last 10 games including tonight, Anaheim is 30-for-34 on the kill, which is a 88.2% rate–6th best in the league over that stretch. Two of the four goals allowed are on 5-on-3 kills.
Prior to this 10-game stretch, Ducks were 28th in the league on the penalty kill–75.9% in the first 42 games of the season.
“I think we just learned a lot from one another,” Poehling said of the unit. “(Assistant coach Ryan McGill) Giller’s doing a great job telling us what he wants to do, and I think we’re just executing it well. We’re playing as a unit, and that’s kind of what we didn’t do as much I felt early on. Whether it’s reading off one another, in the D zone, or using one another to get the puck cleared, I think we’re just doing so much better at that.”
“And then winning face-offs too, I think, is a big thing for us. Like, so hard when you just constantly–I mean, it’s hard to win a face-off on the D zone on the PK, but when you can win a few more of those, it’s a little easier to start off with PK too. That’s helping.”
For the season, Anaheim is last in the league in shorthanded face-off percentage (34.1%), but over the six-game win streak, there has been an uptick to 25th in the league (37.8%).
Poehling earned a reward for the kill’s efficiency in the first period.
Poehling forced a turnover on the wall, and defenseman-turned-forward Ian Moore reacted quickly to corral it and lift it out of the zone. Poehling chased it down and beat the Seattle defense for the Ducks’ seventh shorthanded goal of the season–tied for the league lead with Los Angeles, Buffalo and Calgary.
The goal was Poehling’s first shorthanded goal since Feb. 10, 2024, which came against… the Seattle Kraken. It was his sixth career shorthanded goal.
Wednesday’s 40-save performance in Colorado was the headline grabber for Lukas Dostal, but Friday proved that it’s a full-on resurgence for the Czech Olympic netminder.
Dostal made his sixth start in seven games in Seattle, which marked 16 starts in 19 games since his return from injury in December.
In those six starts, Dostal has posted a 2.12 goals against average with a .923 save percentage, including a .957 save percentage on high-danger chances. In the 11 starts prior, Dostal had a 3.97 GAA and .852 save percentage, with a .721 mark against high-danger chances.
With the defense-first mentality, the Ducks have had to rely on their No. 1 goaltender, and he’s been under pressure. However, Quenneville sees a confident netminder that will continue to shoulder the load in these high-stakes divisional games.
“I think we gotta take care of business here,” Quenneville said, “and I think no matter what the situation is, I think he would be getting these starts with the momentum that he has right now.”
Beckett Sennecke Sits in Third Period
It’s another situation to monitor for the Ducks, as another budding young star was slightly banged up on Friday.
In the second period, 19-year-old Beckett Sennecke took an awkward tumble, as his skates got taken out from under him. Sennecke was slow getting to his feet and to the bench, but after a breath, he finished out the second period with his full shifts. Then in the third period, Sennecke took just three shifts, as his line with Chris Kreider and Jansen Harkins was put on the shelf.
“Becks was a little bit–something was bothering, but he should be fine,” Quenneville said. “I just went down with nine forwards and on a feel basis.”
With the Ducks already without Mason McTavish–who returned to Orange County with an upper-body injury suffered pre-game in Colorado and was already feeling better to the point he could rejoin the team later in the trip, according to Quenneville–in addition to Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry, Anaheim could not stand to lose another offensive talent.