Power Outage: Ducks 3, Red Wings 1

Most of you saw this a few times last night.

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Admittedly, I got to see exactly zero minutes of this game because of the awesome deal that the NHL has in place which blacks out games on Gamecenter Live if they are also being shown on NHL Network. It’s the epitome of frustration when you click on the “Watch Now” button, and it takes you to a screen that says to tune into NHL Network (another paid service.)

That should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to go well.

For all intensive purposes, it sounds like the Wings slogged through another opening period and dug themselves a nice hole before finally ramping up the intensity. Except they ran into the red hot Jonas Hiller, who turned away 46 shots much to the chagrin of Detroit fans everywhere (I shouldn’t mention this, but I DID start him in fantasy hockey last night…).

Honestly, I’m not really surprised at the result. I was talking with Brain from TOV before the game and predicted a 4-1 loss, primarily on the fact that the Wings have done so poorly during back-to-backs of late. Surprisingly, the season back-to-back numbers aren’t terrible (8 wins, 12 losses), but the three previous tries resulted in a record of 0-6. They’ve lost both B2B games in 4 out of 10 series, won both games twice, and split 4 times (counting last night). Not as bad as I expected, but still not very good, and only serves to reinforce my pregame prognostications.

Keeping with the theme of “predictions I wish I had never made” is the proclamation I doled out right after the halfway point of the season about the “Ducks having a penchant to turn it on in the second half” and hoping that the first game of the second half against the Wings wasn’t the “jump start” that they needed. Well, the Ducks have closed the points gap to within three of the Red Wings and won their ninth in a row at the Honda Center. Whoops.

Oh well. Two days rest now before a matchup with the Kings, who may or may not have added the services of one Ilya Kovalchuk. Points are still at a premium for the Wings, so one point is a must and two is, of course, preferred.

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Production Charts

*The season totals are updated here and here.

Line Production

Special Teams Production

Tags: Anaheim Ducks, Ilya Kovalchuk, Jonas Hiller