But if you ask\u00a0LaCombe about his reaction to the reaction of the April 24 highlight, the Minnesota native keeps it California cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did see it,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I try not to go on social when it\u2019s too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the way he\u2019s been playing, LaCombe may be taking an extended social sabbatical in the near future.<\/p>\n
One week and one series into the postseason,\u00a0LaCombe has arrived. Although none of this is new to his teammates, his coaches or ardent Ducks fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s much of a surprise to anyone in the organization for that matter,\u201d Jacob Trouba said of his defensive partner. \u201cSince I\u2019ve gotten here, he\u2019s steadily grown into the player he is. Everyone\u2019s seen it, and he\u2019s been our guy here that\u2019s really driven the bus on the backend of this year for our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaCombe finished the First Round series with nine total points (1-8=9), leads the playoffs in assists and set the team\u2019s franchise record for Round 1 points and assists by a defenseman.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a ton of fun for me,\u201d LaCombe said of his first foray into the playoffs. \u201cThe games ramp up, so I\u2019ve been playing a tighter style. And we\u2019re playing for each other, so it\u2019s been fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got all the tools and shown he\u2019s had all the tools to play in big situations and lead our team,\u201d Trouba added. \u201cOffensively, defensively, he does it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Trouba noted, the do-it-all defenseman has a penchant for offensive skills as well. After all, the former forward noted seeing the defense through the eyes of an offensive player has been an effective part of his game.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Playing forward] was a long time ago, but it\u2019s been huge,\u201d LaCombe says. \u201cI think a lot of those kinds of skills and instincts I picked up when I played forward, I\u2019ve kept on defense. I think some of the reads, you can tell not necessarily what they\u2019re going to do, but you have a feel for their shift here or shift there, so I think it definitely helps.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s got a good feel for it,\u201d head coach Joel Quenneville said of LaCombe\u2019s game. \u201cVery quiet about how he goes about his business and plays that type of game. Very patient, very relaxed. Next thing you know he\u2019s skating up ice, like he\u2019s not even moving and effortlessly goes by people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But if you ask\u00a0LaCombe about his reaction to the reaction of the April 24 highlight, the Minnesota native…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-299932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299932","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=299932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}