The Ducks traveled to St. Louis for Sunday’s meeting with the Blues, one of three teams they trail for the West’s final playoff berth that they will confront head-to-head down the home stretch.
They’ll also square off with the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks in consecutive games on April 3 and April 5 before facing Calgary again April 9, with each of those four matchups presenting a four-point opportunity.
After pulling out a low-wattage 2-1 win over the Nashville Predators on Friday, their third game in four nights following back-to-back losses to Washington and Utah, the Ducks were six points behind Calgary. Utah, Vancouver and St. Louis were all stuffed in between the Ducks and Flames in a five-horse race for the final wild-card berth.
“We’ve been working all year to play meaningful games and it’s been kind of a tough stretch the last week, so we’re just trying to get back on that side of things,” said winger Troy Terry, who scored against Nashville. “Those are the games that we were on the wrong side of last year.”
It was a match in which Terry and ccoach Greg Cronin both said that fatigue was evident from its outset, though thankfully a rested Lukáš Dostál – he had the night off in Utah – answered the bell with 27 of 28 saves.
“It was pretty obvious from the start. We’re pretty fortunate to have some outstanding goaltending here. We just seemed sloppy. We weren’t executing with passes, we seemed a little disjointed,” said Terry, who called the Ducks’ win without their “A” game a sign of maturity for the club.
In St. Louis, they’ll run into a familiar face in Cam Fowler, who played nearly 1,000 games for the Ducks before being traded to the Blues earlier this season, and a familiar foe, one that’s beaten them in both prior confrontations this season.
The Blues rolled 6-2 on Jan. 9 in St. Louis, the first meeting after Fowler’s departure from Anaheim, and then withstood a feverish push in the final three minutes from the Ducks on March 7 at Honda Center, where Mason McTavish’s tying goal came at most a second after the final horn.
Since that game, the Blues slipped in overtime against the Kings, a game in which they showed their own weary legs at times before allowing a goal before a minute of the extra session had passed, and then lost 5-3 to the Penguins in Pittsburgh. They’ll have played Saturday in Minnesota before returning to host the Ducks.
Leading scorer Robert Thomas snapped an 11-game point streak in the March matchup but tallied twice in January’s clash. Fowler has been reinvigorated, racking up 21 points in 35 games as a Blue after collecting just four in 17 appearances with the Ducks to begin his campaign. That included three assists in his first two games opposing the Ducks.
Ducks at St. Louis
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Enterprise Center, St. Louis
TV/radio: Victory+, KCOP (Ch. 13)