{"id":337678,"date":"2025-12-04T13:19:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/337678\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T13:19:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:19:13","slug":"ducks-unacceptable-in-worst-home-loss-in-franchise-history-7-0-defeat-to-utah-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/337678\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducks “unacceptable” in worst home loss in franchise history, 7-0 defeat to Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2013 There wasn\u2019t much of anything to take out of Honda Center on Wednesday night for the Anaheim Ducks<\/a>, as they endured their worst home loss in franchise history\u2013a 7-0 defeat to the Utah Mammoth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one that at the end of the year you look back and you might have two, three, four you can say you throw in the garbage can,\u201d Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. \u201cThat\u2019s the first we\u2019re going to throw in the garbage can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were there any positives to be found in the fifth loss by seven or more goals in franchise history?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s over,\u201d Quenneville said.<\/p>\n

It was the team\u2019s second-ever 7-0 defeat (Dec. 13, 2022 in Toronto). Only an 8-0 defeat in Dallas in 2001 surpassed Wednesday\u2019s result as the worst losing differential in the team\u2019s 32-year history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to hold ourselves to the highest possible standard,\u201d Ducks captain Radko Gudas said. \u201cWe think very highly of ourselves. We want to be better every day, and this wasn’t the case today, so it’s a big learning process for us. This one stings, especially coming back home, in front of our fans. We never want to have games like that, especially in our own barn. Really were not happy with our performance today. So tomorrow we’re going to put our words to work boots on and get back at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anaheim will not get back at it tomorrow, as the Ducks\u2019 coaching staff decided after the game to not hold practice on Thursday. The team will participate in its annual charity holiday shopping event for underprivileged children.<\/p>\n

The Ducks\u2019 next chance to make amends will come on Friday against the Washington Capitals, who put up their own touchdown in San Jose tonight in a 7-1 victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to be better,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cThis is unacceptable from our part.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Quenneville called Wednesday\u2019s effort one of the flattest on the bench and on the ice he\u2019s seen from the Ducks this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked like we\u2019re a step slow,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t much happening tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from a short burst of energy that led to a Mason McTavish goal that was ruled offside when Anaheim was already down 3-0, there wasn\u2019t much of anything that went the way the Ducks have been used to this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the puck decisions,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cWe didn’t own the blue lines, like we can do. We didn’t use our speed to our advantage. There was a lot of stuff that we put behind ourselves, keep bringing back, we usually advance forward. So those are little things that we usually do, and today, we did it until it ended up costing us a lot of those mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the 17th time in 27 games, Anaheim allowed the opening goal of the game, and for the third time in the last six games, the Ducks allowed the first two goals of the game.<\/p>\n

Despite scoring the opening goals of the last two games in Chicago and St. Louis, including a 3-0 lead in an eventual 5-3 loss in Chicago on Sunday, it is a lingering problem for Anaheim.<\/p>\n

The Ducks are 7-9-1 when allowing the first goal and 3-3-0 when allowing the first two goals. Anaheim is 9-1-0 when scoring first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s still a lot of things we need to work on,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cThis is a long season. We need to step after step and try to put together a full 60 minutes. I thought last game in St. Louis, we did a lot better job in all those things, and today we kind of took a step back. A lot of things we’re gonna have to learn from tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ducks have done a pretty good job bouncing back from losses with only three sets of back-to-back losses any point this season. As Gudas alluded to, the Ducks showcased that ability the next night after what could have been a devastating loss in Chicago to again set the tone in a win at St. Louis.<\/p>\n

The trick is to get back on that horse and start stringing the wins together again. More lessons to learn for a still young Ducks core.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrying to recapture a feeling where we can get something consecutively going here,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cThat\u2019s night in, night out, nobody\u2019s lying down here. The highs and the lows and handling going forward is part of a young team trying to find its way. I feel that the response we felt in situations comparable to how we feel right now going into the next game, we\u2019ve been pretty effective, but we gotta prove that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vyacheslav Buteyets Gets Plenty of Work in NHL Debut<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t an ideal spot for the NHL debut of 23-year-old Vyacheslav \u201cSlava\u201d Buteyets, as the 6-foot-4 Russian netminder came in in relief for the third period with the Ducks trailing 3-0.<\/p>\n

However, whenever that call came, he would take it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s about job trying to get done and that’s it,\u201d Buteyets said. \u201c(Ducks goaltending coach) Peter Budaj came to locker room and say that I’m jumping in. So, I can’t say that I was surprised because all the coaches telling me that I have always been ready. So that’s what I was, and I was ready.<\/p>\n

Buteyets allowed three difficult goals on 13 shots in the third period, as Utah kept coming after putting four goals past Ville Husso on 21 shots.<\/p>\n

\u201cTough spot, ya know?\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cHe did what he had to do on a couple funny bounces at the net. It\u2019s kind of an opportunity for him. When we looked at our depth chart at the beginning of the year, I don\u2019t know if we forecasted him playing this early in the season. He got a chance to play, and it\u2019s a heck of an accomplishment to get an NHL game. We\u2019ll see going forward how he does, but I thought he was okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buteyets entered the season as the fifth goaltender in the Anaheim Ducks organization, which landed him with the ECHL\u2019s Tulsa Oilers. However, with injuries to the Ducks\u2019 top two netminders\u2013Lukas Dostal and Petr Mrazek\u2013and Anaheim\u2019s No. 4 goaltender, Calle Clang, on personal leave, Buteyets made his way through AHL San Diego to Anaheim for his NHL debut.<\/p>\n

Buteyets became the 72nd goalie in league history to play in the ECHL, AHL and NHL in the same season, and the second Ducks netminder to do so following Timo Pielmeier in 2010-11.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings happen quickly, and so you have to just get used to it,\u201d Buteyets said, \u201cand it’s nothing but work. So it doesn’t matter where are you, you just have to put it to work every single time, and it doesn’t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Ducks goaltending depth thinned out, it doesn\u2019t help matters for Husso or Buteyets to be put in the positions they were tonight. Especially with Dostal and Mrazek bailing out the team in many spots early in the year, Anaheim knows it needs to be better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody needs to tighten things up,\u201d Gudas said. \u201cThe goalies been a huge part of our success. There are big reasons why we are where we are. And we need to, in these games, we need to come big for them as well. We need to block a lot more shots. We need to make them see the puck. We can’t give them three-on-ones, you know? Those are things we’re gonna look at tomorrow and learn from a bit better. And I’m pretty confident that this will not happen again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Injury Updates: Granlund Close, Mr\u00e1zek Out 2-3 Weeks, Dost\u00e1l \u201cOn Course\u201d<\/p>\n

Ducks forward Mikael Granlund (injured reserve, lower-body) skated with the team for the first time on Wednesday morning. Granlund has been out of the last eight games and 16 of the last 17 after suffering and reaggravating the same lower-body injury.<\/p>\n

Quenneville said that Granlund could draw back into the line-up at the end of this three-game homestand or at the start of the next road trip.<\/p>\n

Back-up goaltender Petr Mr\u00e1zek was given a two-to-three week timeline for his lower-body injury, according to Quenneville. Mr\u00e1zek left in the third period in Chicago on Sunday.<\/p>\n

No. 1 goaltender Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l made an on-ice appearance before the morning skate on Wednesday after being officially put on injured reserve on Monday.<\/p>\n

Dost\u00e1l has been out one week since being dinged with an upper-body injury. Quenneville said Dost\u00e1l is \u201con course\u201d for his two-to-three-week recovery window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2013 There wasn\u2019t much of anything to take out of Honda Center on Wednesday night for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,1739,5,1552,2711,285,40,4,9464,5695,51,3154,45642],"class_list":{"0":"post-337678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim-ducks","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-ducks","10":"tag-anaheimducks","11":"tag-ducks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-joel-quenneville","14":"tag-mighty-ducks","15":"tag-national-hockey-league","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-radko-gudas","19":"tag-tst-los-angeles","20":"tag-utah","21":"tag-utah-mammoth","22":"tag-vyacheslav-buteyets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115661502084640291","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}