ANAHEIM \u2014 Every game is a vital game for the Ducks and now they\u2019ll pivot off a win over the Pacific Division leader on Sunday into a tilt with the team they\u2019re tied with in the standings, the Seattle Kraken, on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
It will be the Ducks\u2019 final opportunity to secure two points before the Olympic break, with no more games until Feb. 25. While five Ducks will embark for Milan, the rest of the group could get a chance to heal up from the grind of a condensed schedule.<\/p>\n
Troy Terry and Mason McTavish each made their returns in Sunday\u2019s 4-3 victory over the division-leading Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>, whom the Ducks swept for the first time in franchise history. Leo Carlsson (thigh) and Frank Vatrano (shoulder) will remain out until after the break<\/a>.<\/p>\n With Carlsson being out for the entire eight-wins-in-10-games stretch and McTavish missing the recent five-game road trip, center Ryan Poehling has shined for the Ducks of late.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s been the heartbeat of our team. Especially when I was out, I was watching him. The workmanlike attitude he brings every game,\u201d said Terry, extolling Poehling\u2019s speed, attention to detail and faceoff proficiency. \u201cHe\u2019s a really skilled player, and you see that as the year\u2019s gone on, more and more. He looks confident and he\u2019s still doing all those intangible things.\u201d<\/p>\n Poehling, who had been a bottom-six center with penalty-kill duties for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia before arriving in Orange County, has been playing up the lineup. He skated on the second line between Terry and Chris Kreider, and the trio accounted for all three non-power-play goals that the Ducks scored against Vegas.<\/p>\n He made a particularly pretty play on the Ducks\u2019 first goal Sunday, on which he registered a primary assist with a guileful setup for Kreider off a broken play. Of Poehling\u2019s 16 helpers this season, 14 have been of the primary variety, more first assists than prominent teammates like Cutter Gauthier and Mason McTavish.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s just flying, all around the ice,\u201d Kreider said. \u201cHe\u2019s leading the rush, making the right plays at the right time and driving his legs to get back to play good defense, too. He\u2019s been awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n Poehling was the known commodity in a sell-low trade on former team-leading scorer Trevor Zegras. He arrived from Philly along with two draft picks, one of which became 18-year-old Swedish center Eric Nilson last June before the other was dealt for gritty winger Jeffrey Viel this January. Zegras has delivered from the outset of the season, accumulating 20 goals and 27 assists in 54 games as a Flyer.<\/p>\n Poehling\u2019s acclimation has been more gradual. Ducks coach Joel Quenneville concurred with Terry\u2019s assessment of Poehling\u2019s growth as a Duck.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s gotten better as the season\u2019s progressed. He had an ordinary start, and then he started playing more. All of a sudden, he\u2019s skating, and then we\u2019re using him as a (top) penalty killer, on faceoffs and against good players,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cHis speed can beat some pressure and can beat defensemen going wide. A lot of good things. You\u2019re down two of your top centermen, so he\u2019s been playing with different caliber players, but we\u2019re always comfortable with that line out there.\u201d<\/p>\n Poehling and pals will face a Kraken club that has won four straight and five of its past six. Entering Monday\u2019s slate of games, the Kraken were one of five Pacific Division teams with more total losses than wins, and they were dead even in terms of goals for and goals against per game at 2.87.<\/p>\n KRAKEN AT DUCKS<\/p>\n When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n Where: Honda Center<\/p>\n TV: TNT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM \u2014 Every game is a vital game for the Ducks and now they\u2019ll pivot off a win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,127],"class_list":["post-161017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}