One of the NHL’s top road teams looks to continue its success away from home when the Minnesota Wild visit the Anaheim Ducks on Friday.
The Wild are 6-1-1 on the road this season, with a league-leading 13 points.
After a 5-1 loss at home to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday, the Wild got back to winning ways at the start of a three-game road trip on Thursday, with a 5-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks.
“I think if you want to be a competitive team, you can’t just be a good home team,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “You have to have that road warrior mentality, and I think the team embraces that. (If) it goes into the other team’s structure, everybody has to pull the trigger the right way.”
Kirill Kaprizov had three assists against San Jose, as he snapped his two-game pointless streak. The star forward ranks second in the NHL with 24 points, one behind the total of Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche. Kaprizov has released 17 points (four goals, 13 assists) in foreign games.
Beyond their good form on the road, the Wild also have the momentum of their long reign over the Ducks. Minnesota is 15-1-0 in their last 16 games against Anaheim dating back to January 2021.
That creates a major challenge for a Ducks team that sits near the bottom of the NHL standings. Anaheim is 0-2-1 in its past three games, including losses to the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks in the first two contests of a six-game homestand.
Olen Zellweger scored a goal less than six minutes into the Ducks’ 5-1 loss to Vancouver on Tuesday, but the lead was blown when the Canucks scored five unanswered goals. Anaheim was outshot 37-22, continuing the team’s struggles in scoring and getting pucks in the net.
“It seems like the more you try, the harder things get,” Ducks pitcher Alex Killorn told the Orange County Register. “We took some good steps in the Chicago game. We played really well and made a lot of shots. It seemed like (Tuesday), we didn’t have a lot of energy. … It seemed like we had a good, good start and we just didn’t get it again.”
The Ducks’ 25 goals are the fewest in the NHL, and the club has also struggled on both the power play (6-for-40 percent, 15 percent) and on the penalty kill (25-for-34, 73.5 percent).
Minnesota’s penalty kill has struggled, as its 66.7 percent success rate ranks 31st out of 32 teams. The Wild are hoping that Thursday’s game is a turning point, as they went 3-for-3 in kills against San Jose. It was just the fifth time in 13 games that Minnesota had not allowed a power play count.
With Marc-Andre Fleury facing the Sharks, Filip Gustavsson could get a goal Friday in the second half of the Wild’s comeback. Gustavsson has a solid .917 save percentage and 2.33 goals against average in nine starts this season.
Goaltender Lukas Dostal has been a bright spot for Anaheim, though nine of his 25 goals allowed have come in his last two games. Dostal has started 10 of Anaheim’s 12 games, so backup James Reimer could face Minnesota if the Ducks feel Dostal needs rest.
–Field Level Media