“It’s over.”
That was the one positive that Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville took from their 7-0 shellacking at the hands of the Utah Mammoth on Wednesday night. It was the worst home loss in franchise history, deemed an “unacceptable” performance by captain Radko Gudas during his postgame media scrum.
Friday presents an opportunity to turn the page, although it comes against a white-hot Washington Capitals team, who trounced the San Jose Sharks 7-1 on Wednesday. The Capitals have won nine of their last 10 games.
“They’re a heavy team,” Quenneville said. “They hang onto the puck. We’ve got to make sure we go through the puck and force loose pucks or turnovers as far as that goes. We’ve got to be quick with it as well ourselves in the offensive zone. There’s not a lot of plays into the slot area. We want to make sure that we get through to the net and try to win those battles. When you’re playing a team like this, nothing has to be pretty. It’s simple and hard work.”
“They’ve been playing some really good hockey lately,” Cutter Gauthier said. “We know we can compete with any team in the league, no matter the night. It’ll be a fun test to us to see how we’re doing and how well we can come back after a tough game like we had.”
“They’re playing at a real high level all year,” Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery said. “I think last game that they had—judging by the way that the season’s gone for them—was a one-off for them, so you know you’re going to face a hungry team at home. Their ability to generate rush chances, capitalize on their opportunities. They’ve got a real high finish rate. Create odd-man rushes, there’s a lot of issues that they can give you with their speed and skill, especially up front, but then they’ve also got those guys on the back end that have that sort of elite lateral mobility, can get up in the rush, can give you issues at the offensive blue line with activating down. Gonna need to be really, really sharp here to finish this road trip off.”
Ryan Strome will re-enter the lineup after being a healthy scratch in the last two games. He’ll center Frank Vatrano and Mikael Granlund, who is returning from a 10-game absence caused by a lower-body injury.
“Anyone who’s competitive wants to play,” Strome said. You’ll never find a guy who gets healthy scratched who’s happy about it. Luckily, I have a wealth of experience to draw on and some highs and lows in my career. You just roll with the punches and work hard the last couple days and get back at it. At the end of the day, it’s a team game and our team’s had a really good year. I think the attention should be on that, not any individual.
“And I also think the opportunity for myself to lead by example in the situation because obviously it sucks, but I can’t bring the team down, right? It’s all about the team. And I think we’ve had a really good mindset with that this year. Unfortunately, I was the example of that. I think it’s important that you have a good attitude and you support the guys because we’ve been team-first this year and that’s the way it should be. Just hoping to get back in here tonight and help the boys out and get back in the win column.”
“He’s been around. He knows how to play the game,” Quenneville said. “We just want him to be confortable out there and come back. That line with him and Frankie on it, whether they’re going to produce or not produce offensively, I think they should give us momentum in the game and have a lot of possession and play to his strengths.”
Capitals defenseman John Carlson will miss a second consecutive game with an upper-body injury. Center Justin Sourdif (lower-body) is a game-time decision.
Ducks Projected Lines
Chris Kreider – Leo Carlsson – Troy Terry
Cutter Gauthier – Mason McTavish – Beckett Sennecke
Frank Vatrano – Ryan Strome – Mikael Granlund
Ross Johnston – Ryan Poehling – Alex Killorn
Jackson LaCombe – Jacob Trouba
Olen Zellweger – Radko Gudas
Pavel Mintyukov – Drew Helleson
Ville Husso (confirmed)
Capitals Projected Lines
Alex Ovechkin – Dylan Strome – Anthony Beauvillier
Aliaksei Protas – Justin Sourdif – Tom Wilson
Brandon Duhaime – Nic Dowd – Ryan Leonard
Connor McMichael – Hendrix Lapierre – Ethen Frank
Martin Fehérváry – Rasmus Sandin
Jakob Chychrun – Matt Roy
Declan Chisholm – Trevor van Riemsdyk
Logan Thompson (confirmed)
