SERIES SCHEDULE<\/p>\n
(Best-of-seven, all times PT)<\/p>\n
Game 1: Monday, May 4, 6:30 p.m., T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas<\/p>\n
Game 2: Wednesday, May 6, 6:30 p.m., T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas<\/p>\n
Game 3: Friday, May 8, 6:30 p.m., Honda Center<\/p>\n
Game 4: Sunday, May 10, 6:30 p.m., Honda Center<\/p>\n
*Game 5: Tuesday, May 12, TBD, T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas<\/p>\n
*Game 6: Thursday, May 14, TBD, Honda Center<\/p>\n
*Game 7: Saturday, May 16, TBD, T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas<\/p>\n
* \u2013if necessary<\/p>\n
HEAD-TO-HEAD<\/p>\n
The Ducks won the regular-season series, 3-0-0 (Golden Knights 0-1-2)<\/p>\n
Nov. 8 : Ducks 4, Golden Knights 3 (OT) at T-Mobile Arena<\/p>\n
Nov. 22: Ducks\u00a0 4, Golden Knights 3 (OT) at Honda Center<\/p>\n
Feb. 1: Ducks 4, Golden Knights 3 at Honda Center<\/p>\n
TALE OF THE TAPE<\/p>\n
Golden Knights (regular-season rank) \u2026 category \u2026 Ducks (regular-season rank)<\/p>\n
39-26-17, 95 points \u2026 Season record \u2026 43-33-6, 91 points<\/p>\n
3.22 (14th) \u2026 Goals per game\u2026 3.23 (13th)<\/p>\n
2.85 (12th) \u2026 Goals-against per game \u2026 3.51 (29th)<\/p>\n
24.6% (6th) \u2026 Power-play Pct. \u2026 18.6% (23rd)<\/p>\n
81.4% (T-6th) \u2026 Penalty-kill Pct. \u2026 74.6% (T-26th)<\/p>\n
+15 (13th) \u2026 Goal Differential \u2026 -15 (19th)<\/p>\n
87.9% (T-27th)\u00a0 \u2026 Save Pct. \u2026 87.6%( 30th)<\/p>\n
51.0%\u00a0 (T-10th) \u2026 Faceoff Pct. \u2026 48.0% (25th)<\/p>\n
FORWARDS<\/p>\n
The Ducks deepened their attack in a major way over the summer then continued making additions and adjustments in-season. The result is tremendous scoring balance, an overarching ethos and defined roles for each line and skater. In Round 1 against the Edmonton Oilers, that all shined through. Trade additions like Ryan Poehling and Jeffrey Viel proved their worth while Mason McTavish and Chris Kreider came back to life and cornerstones Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier lived up to their billing. Rookie Beckett Sennecke had just one point and a -7 rating, but given his history of rebounding, he could be something of a sleeping lion.<\/p>\n
Vegas has its own kings of the jungle, namely Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hertl, Pavel Dorofeyev and Ivan Barbashaev. Eichel, Marner and Stone are all among the best two-way forwards in hockey, combining for 243 points in 215 games this season while providing elite defense. Dorofeyev and Barbashev notched 60 goals between them while Hertl, once San Jose\u2019s marquee forward, is now anchoring the bottom six in Vegas, which could soon also include the injured former Duck William Karlsson. Eichel, Stone and Barbashev were all part of the 2023 Stanley Cup champion Knights and after beating the Utah Mammoth in six games will now skate in a series that pits depth on the Ducks\u2019 side against the superlative quality of Vegas\u2019 top six.<\/p>\n
EDGE: EVEN<\/p>\n
DEFENSEMEN<\/p>\n
Each team made a significant in-season move on defense, and both corps are anchored by a silky-skating No. 1. In the Ducks\u2019 case, the acquisition was John Carlson, and the velvety pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance is Jackson LaCombe. Carlson delivered in Round 1 skating opposite Pavel Mintyukov, but it was LaCombe and veteran partner Jacob Trouba who stole the show against Edmonton. They stifled Connor McDavid all series and later matched up effectively with both him and Leon Draisaitl after they joined the same line. McDavid played the series with a foot fracture and LaCombe showed him no quarter, also factoring significantly into the Ducks\u2019 game getting up ice and flourishing in the offensive zone to boot.<\/p>\n
Vegas snagged former Calgary Flame Rasmus Andersson after months of talks to land him, reinforcing a blue line that already boasted uber-mobile former Duck Shea Theodore and another one-time Flame, U.S. Olympian Noah Hanifin. Their offensive contributions from the back end were fewer in Round 1 than those of the Ducks and their depth is also not as strong overall.<\/p>\n
EDGE: DUCKS<\/p>\n
GOALIES<\/p>\n
Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l is no longer the goalie of tomorrow, but the netminder of now and the foreseeable future for the Ducks. Perhaps no player has been as emblematic of their bounceback as the poised Czech. He\u2019s proven capable of muddling through tough stretches \u2013\u2013 like their nine-game losing streak and 2-6-2 finish to the season \u2013\u2013 and then taking flight anew, as they did in Round 1 and during two seven-game surges. He was yanked from Game 5, a potentially pivotal missed opportunity to clinch in Edmonton, and responded with his best performance yet in Game 6\u2019s slamming of the door.<\/p>\n
The Ducks faced two different Vegas goalies during the season series and will now need to solve a third, Carter Hart. Adin Hill\u2019s Stanley Cup glory has faded largely and Akira Schmid proved to be more a stopgap than a permanent solution. Now Hart, whom John Tortorella also coached in Philadelphia, is their man between the pipes. He posted an unremarkable 5-3-3 record before a lower-body injury cost him nearly three months of action. He returned to win his final six starts of the year, posting a 1.66 goals-against average and .930 save percentage in the process.<\/p>\n
EDGE: DUCKS<\/p>\n
SPECIAL TEAMS<\/p>\n
The Ducks struggled to find consistency on special teams all season and their penalty kill carried that over into the first round of the playoffs, killing six straight penalties and then ceding goals in four of their final eight shorthanded situations. At their worst, they were getting scored on half the time, but they sustained that same 50% clip on the power play across the span of six games, by far the most efficient display of Round 1.<\/p>\n
Vegas has been steadier in both areas of special teams, sustaining their power play\u2019s potency from the regular season and amping up their penalty kill against Utah. Their biggest stars excel in all situations, with both their special-teams baseline and consistency being higher than the Ducks\u2019.<\/p>\n
EDGE: GOLDEN KNIGHTS<\/p>\n
COACHES<\/p>\n
Tortorella was one of two rare 11th-hour coaching hires, with Peter DeBoer joining the New York Islanders when they had just four games left on their slate, half as many as Vegas had remaining when it contracted Tortorella. There\u2019s no time for systems or macro adjustments at that point, and those things are not \u201cTorts\u2019\u201d forte anyway. He is a motivator and a pusher of buttons, and so far he has pressed the right ones for a Vegas squad that had a complacent feel at times under his predecessor Bruce Cassidy.<\/p>\n
The Ducks made their coaching change on a more traditional timeline after last season, thanking Greg Cronin for his service and bringing in Joel Quenneville, who in Chicago led a renaissance like the Ducks hope to have. Quenneville let the group breathe \u2013\u2013 and make its share of mistakes \u2013\u2013 during the regular season, but he has more tightly managed things in the playoffs. So far, it\u2019s paying off, as the Ducks knocked out the two-time conference champs and left them searching for answers north of the border.<\/p>\n
EDGE: DUCKS<\/p>\n
SERIES PREDICTION<\/p>\n
Down the stretch, it was the Ducks stumbling, blowing a five-point lead on the division to end up starting the playoffs on the road, and the Golden Knights capitalizing, riding their boost from the coaching change to yet another division title, their fifth in nine years dating back to their inaugural season.<\/p>\n
Yet the Ducks have already shown that they were both dialed in for the postseason and capable of winning a series against a more seasoned opponent, even without home ice. If a passengerless Game 6 was any indication, they are building into their game and could be poised for yet another upset.<\/p>\n
PREDICTION: DUCKS IN SIX<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SERIES SCHEDULE (Best-of-seven, all times PT) Game 1: Monday, May 4, 6:30 p.m., T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas Game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,127,136],"class_list":["post-298490","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","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298490","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=298490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}