The Ducks will ring in December by hosting the Ottawa Senators on Sunday in a matchup of teams that are an eyelash under .500 with designs on gaining some upward momentum.
They’ll enter the clash with identical .477 points percentages that situate them near the bottom of their respective divisions but not far behind a crowded pack of middling clubs. The Ducks have had more of a defensive inclination while the Senators have shown more scoring pop to date.
Ducks coach Greg Cronin said his team hadn’t “had too many stinkers” of late, and that’s been reflected by their 5-3-1 record across their past nine games, with four of their five-plus-goal games this season arriving in that span.
“Since we got back from that New York trip, I think we’ve been on a pretty good path in terms of playing with an identity and competing,” Cronin said.
They had to grind hard on Black Friday, when they played what Cronin described as something of a postseason-style game against the Kings at Honda Center. Though they fell 2-1 to what veteran forward Ryan Strome described as a “mature, veteran team” that they couldn’t quite edge past despite playing a “disciplined, structured and north-south” game, the Ducks still felt they carried forward some positive indicators from their recent play.
“It was a good hockey game. We competed hard. I thought we dictated a lot of the game. We played similar to the way we’ve been playing,” Strome said.
Kings coach Jim Hiller concurred. With teams frequently playing the Southern California franchises back to back, he and Cronin get constant looks at one another’s teams during pre-scouts, and Hiller assessed the Ducks’ performance quite favorably.
“I thought – we’ve played them this year, I’ve scouted them this year – I thought that’s the best game they’ve played this year. I thought they played very well,” Hiller said.
Time will tell if Sunday’s match elicits similar plaudits from Ottawa coach Travis Green, who spent parts of two seasons with the Ducks as a player and is in his first year as the Sens’ head coach after previously guiding the Vancouver Canucks and New Jersey Devils briefly.
Though Brock McGinn has made some progress in his return, he and Robby Fabbri remained unavailable. So, too, did Leo Carlsson, whose upper-body injury has kept him out of the Ducks’ past two matches. Cam Fowler will be a game-time decision.
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Troy Terry has four points across his three-game scoring streak, while Trevor Zegras just snapped a four-gamer that saw him compile six points.
For Ottawa, forwards Tim Stützle and Drake Batherson each have seven points in the Sens’ past five outings. Captain Brady Tkachuk, whom Cronin suggested could be a model for his own power forward Mason McTavish, has racked up five points during a three-game surge. Those are the three Senators scoring above a point per game this season, with Stützle’s 28 points in 22 games leading the way.
Ottawa at Ducks
When: 5 p.m. Sunday
Where: Honda Center
How to watch: Victory+