With a dominant 5-2 victory over the Calgary Flames on Friday, Nov 30 2013, the Anaheim Ducks kept two impressive streaks alive. The victory improved the Ducks’ home record this season, to 10-0-1, making them the last NHL team not to have lost a home game in regulation time.
This also marked the Ducks’ 18th consecutive home victory over the Calgary Flames. The last time Calgary won in Anaheim, was Jan 19, 2004.
This is the best home start in club history.
This was Saku Koivu’s first game back since Oct 27 at Columbus. The Finnish center was reunited with Andrew Cogliano and Daniel Winnick, and showed little signs of rust. In the first period, Koivu helped the Ducks open the scoring when he fed the puck to Andrew Cogliano in the right faceoff circle, and Cogs showed great patience as he did a partial spin-o-rama, and waited for defenseman Sami Vatanen to jump into the play. Cogs dropped a beautiful pass to Vatanen, and Vatanen beat Flames goalie Reto Berra to give the Ducks a 1-0 lead at 12:20 of the first period. Just 46 secs later, Corey Perry redirected Ben Lovejoy’s slapshot to give the Ducks a 2-0 lead which virtually sealed the win. The lead was never threatened.
The Ducks added 2 more goals in the second period. Calgary scored twice as well. In the third, Dustin Penner converted a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing play with linemates Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf at 11:26 to make the score 5-2. It was Penner’s second goal of the game.
The Ducks outshot the Flames in every period, and overall outshot them by a margin of 42-21.
The Ducks did not take any penalties in the game, and were 1-4 on Power play opportunities.
Dustin Penner now has five goals in his last three games.
Three Stars of the game:
1) Dustin Penner
2) Ryan Getzlaf
3) Andrew Cogliano
The Ducks now face a stretch of tough games against the best teams in the Western Conference –
Nov 30 vs San Jose, Dec 3 vs Los Angeles, Dec 6 vs Chicago, Dec 7 vs St.Louis.
Line combinations for Nov 29 vs Calgary:
Getzlaf/Perry/Penner
Bonino/Palmieri/Jackman
Koivu/Winnick/Cogliano
Perreault/Beleskey/Selanne
Defense pairings:
Fowler/Yonkman
Lindholm/Lovejoy
Vatanen/Fistric
*The Ducks are currently without three of their starting defenseman. Francois Beauchemin is listed as “day to day” with an upper body injury. Sheldon Souray (wrist) will not return until 2014. Luca Sbisa (wrist) is expected to miss six weeks. Beauchemin/Souray are normally the team’s top defensive tandem.
