First place in the Pacific Division will be on the line Saturday night when the reigning division champion Vegas Golden Knights visit the Anaheim Ducks.
Anaheim finished sixth in the division last season, 30 points behind Vegas, but enters this game with a one-point lead over the Golden Knights at the quarter mark of the season.
Vegas holds a 27-7-2 all-time series edge against the Ducks, outscoring the Ducks 130-80 in the process, and is 12-4-1 all-time in Anaheim. However, the Ducks won the first meeting between the two teams on Nov. 8 in Las Vegas, 4-3, on a Jacob Trouba goal with 32 seconds left in overtime.
The Golden Knights trailed 3-1 heading into the third period of that game but dominated the final 20 minutes of regulation, outshooting the Ducks 21-6. Pavel Dorofeyev and Kaeden Korczak scored to force the extra period. Leo Carlson had two goals and assisted on Trouba’s game-winner, a backhand shot through the pads of Akira Schmid, to lead the Ducks.
“Really thought we should have won the game, to be honest with you,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said afterward. “All in all, I thought it was certainly a game we should have had two points in.”
This will be the middle game of a head-scratching three-game road trip for the Golden Knights that started with an impressive 4-1 victory over Utah in Salt Lake City on Thursday and finishes with another contest against the Mammoth on Monday.
Vegas’ Jack Eichel snapped a nine-game goal drought with two goals and also had an assist, his fourth three-point game of the season. Braeden Bowman had a goal and an assist, Ben Hutton scored for the second straight game and Schmid made 25 saves to earn his ninth win, tying his career high.
Eichel, alone on the left side of the crease, scored on a rebound from a Dorofeyev shot into an open net to give the Golden Knights a 1-0 lead and end his goal drought, which is tied for the longest in his career with the Golden Knights.
“You’re not going to get many more that are easier than that one, so it was good to get that one,” Eichel said.
“The longer it goes, the more it gets kind of talked about,” Cassidy said. “I think he’s had some real good looks lately. They haven’t gone in for him, and sure enough, he gets one that’s basically a tap-in.”
Anaheim, which is 7-2-0 at home, comes in off a 3-2 loss to the visiting Ottawa Senators on Thursday. It was the second game of a back-to-back that began with an emotional and hard-fought 4-3 victory over the Boston Bruins.
Ottawa’s Drake Batherson deflected a Jake Sanderson point shot into the net for the game-winner with just 1:58 to go in regulation to snap the Ducks’ six-game home winning streak.
“We were two minutes away from grabbing a point, at least,” said Anaheim goaltender Petr Mrazek, who had 22 saves. “And we come up with nothing, so that’s frustrating.”
“Hung in there till the last two minutes when they got the go-ahead goal there,” said forward Mason McTavish, who scored a second-period goal to give Anaheim a 2-1 lead. “It was a decent effort from us, but it would have been a lot better if we got at least a point there.”
–Field Level Media
