After withstanding barrages that bookended the Utah Mammoth\u2019s losing effort Friday, the Ducks returned home to await Sunday\u2019s clash with the Buffalo Sabres, the NHL\u2019s hottest team over a span of more than four months.<\/p>\n
Goalie Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l held the Ducks in a game they trailed early and he sparkled once more as they faced a fervent push while up one goal late, enabling them to deposit a pair of empty-netters. Veteran Alex Killorn scored one of their goals against the goalie and set up the other, while Mason McTavish returned to the lineup (healthy scratch) to play 10:22.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a night of superlatives for the Ducks, but in the second game of a back-to-back set and against the team they\u2019d play in Round 1 of the playoffs if they began today, they picked up two critical points<\/a>. Just 24 hours earlier, they\u2019d lost in a shootout against the Philadelphia Flyers<\/a>, after which leading scorer Cutter Gauthier said they\u2019d need to be able to win without their best stuff some nights moving forward.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to figure out a way to really elevate our \u2018B\u2019 game and be able to beat teams with our \u2018B\u2019 game,\u201d Gauthier said.<\/p>\n The Ducks allowed the game\u2019s first goal for the 43rd time this season and got win No. 18 under those circumstances. Yet Buffalo is 32-5-1 when scoring first, almost as dominant as league-leading Colorado, who is 35-2-5.<\/p>\n Buffalo owns the longest playoff drought in the NHL and the Ducks are riding the longest slump in the West. But both clubs could end those funks and in convincing fashion, since both sit perched atop their respective divisions presently.<\/p>\n The Sabres have scored the most goals, allowed the fewest goals and posted the best points percentage by over 100 clicks since Dec. 9. They\u2019ve accumulated the most points since Nov. 9 to climb to the top of the ruthlessly competitive Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n The Ducks will only face one team chasing them, limiting their liability in four-point games, when they visit the Oilers on March 28. The Sabres will later square off with second-place Tampa Bay, as well as the current wild-card holders in the Atlantic, Detroit and Boston.<\/p>\n Tage Thompson, the son of former Ducks assistant coach Rocky Thompson and an Olympic gold medalist with Team USA, paces the Sabres in scoring. On the blue line, Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power were No. 1 overall picks, with Dahlin chasing a point-per-game pace and a single-season career high in scoring.<\/p>\n Buffalo at Ducks<\/p>\n When: 5 p.m. Sunday<\/p>\n Where: Honda Center<\/p>\n TV: FOX 11, Victory+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After withstanding barrages that bookended the Utah Mammoth\u2019s losing effort Friday, the Ducks returned home to await Sunday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,127],"class_list":["post-230477","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\/230477","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=230477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}