A weeklong jaunt out west ends on Sunday night with the Blackhawks in the OC to face the Anaheim Ducks.

This game serves as the final piece of bread on a California-centric sandwich of games that had one in Vegas and a pair in LA on the inside of it. These two teams met last Sunday at the United Center, with a Connor Bedard Show taking over during a 5-3 Blackhawks victory. Anaheim’s had three more games since, picking up wins over St. Louis last Monday and over Washington on Friday but having its doors blown off by Utah in a 7-0 throttling on Wednesday. The Ducks are still atop the Pacific Division, although VGK and LA are right behind them and the Edmonton Oilers have emerged from their early-season slumber and are ascending the standings once again.

Beyond that, most of what was written ahead of last week’s game still holds true. A talented group of young forwards leads the way in Leo Carlsson, Beckett Sennecke and Mason McTvaish, while the blue line is paced by some youngsters like Olen Zellweger and Jackson LaCombe and also some obnoxious veterans like Jacob Trouba and Radko Gudas. In the last few weeks, though, Anaheim has placed two goals on IR: starter Lukas Dostal just before Thanksgiving and old friend Petr Mrazek earlier this week, with the latter being injured during the prior meeting between these two teams. It appears to be Ville Husso’s net for the time being, which means Anaheim’s offense will need to keep scoring if it hopes to keep winning.

Here was Anaheim’s lineup at practice on Saturday:

Ducks practice lines (12/06):

Kreider-Carlsson-Terry
Gauthier-McTavish-Sennecke
Vatrano-Strome-Killorn
Johnston-Poehling-Granlund
Nesterenko

LaCombe-Trouba
Zellweger-Gudas
Mintyukov-Helleson
Harkins-Moore

Husso | Buteyets

#FlyTogether

— Derek Lee (@dereklee27.bsky.social) December 6, 2025 at 1:18 PM

The Hawks will be looking for a rebound performance after Saturday’s woeful outing in LA, where the host Kings put up a touchdown in a 6-0 shutout. Chicago’s been better about responding after abysmal games earlier this season, turning around from a 9-3 loss in Buffalo to give Colorado all it could handle in a game that felt easier to stomach despite it being a 1-0 defeat. It’ll certainly need to do that again, because any lingering malaise from Saturday could result in Chicago being embarrassed even further, as this is an Anaheim team that’s likely still grumpy from the events over at 1901 W. Madison one week prior and would be happy to run the Hawks out of the building.

Without a morning skate, line combos are up in the air, although one expectation is for Arvid Soderblom to be in net after Knight endured Saturday’s debacle. Here’s the lineup from that game:

Blackhawks lines
per @benpopecst.bsky.social

Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Moore-Nazar-Bertuzzi
Donato-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Dach-Lafferty

Vlasic-Levshunov
Kaiser-Crevier
Grzelcyk-Murphy
Rinzel

Knight

— lineslineslines.bsky.social (@lineslineslines.bsky.social) December 6, 2025 at 7:39 PM

A shot at redemption arriving 24 hours later is probably the best way to move on from that Kings game on Saturday. It might take the Hawks a bit to find their legs in this game considering it’s the tail end of a back-to-back as well as Chicago’s third game in four nights. But goals will be there for the taking against an Anaheim side that tends to outscore its opponents en route to a victory. Hopefully Chicago will bring some firepower of its own as well.

Let’s go Hawks.

Tale of the Tape

Blackhawks — Statistic — Ducks
46.66% (26th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 51.10% (13th)
45.13% (28th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 48.20% (24th)
3.04 (t-15th) — Goals per game — 3.46 (3rd)
2.93 (17th) — Goals against per game — 3.36 (24th)
46.9% (t-27th) — Faceoffs — 46.7% (29th)
22.4% (t-9th) — Power play — 17.7% (21st)
84.5% (5th) — Penalty kill — 75.8% (27th)
(All stats from this season)

How to watch

When: 7 p.m. CT
Where: Honda Center, Anaheim
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720