Just over two weeks after they needed overtime to settle their differences, the Anaheim Ducks will be at home again when they face the Utah Mammoth.
The Ducks pulled off an improbable 3-2 overtime victory over the Mammoth on Nov. 17 when Troy Terry tied it on a goal with 4.1 seconds remaining in regulation and Olen Zellweger won it 1:50 into the extra period.
Anaheim rookie Beckett Sennecke had an assist on Zellweger’s game-winner to start his current eight-game points streak (one goal, seven assists). The 19-year-old tied Paul Kariya’s mark from 1994-95 as the longest points streak by a rookie in franchise history.
The Ducks won their first five games in November as part of a seven-game winning streak, then immediately lost three consecutive. The victory over Utah ended that dry spell and started a 5-3-0 run that has kept them in first place in the Pacific Division.
The current run included a 4-1 road victory against the St. Louis Blues on Monday when Anaheim points leader Leo Carlsson scored his 14th goal of the season and Chris Kreider added his 13th into an empty net.
Ville Husso made 21 saves for the Ducks to improve to 2-1-0. Husso, who made his season debut on Friday, started each of the past three games with No. 1 goalie Lukas Dostal out with an upper-body injury and expected to miss two-to-three weeks.
Husso helped Anaheim kill off all six St. Louis power-play opportunities.
“We changed our penalty killing units a bit,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said of the team that is 27th in the NHL with a 75.6 percent kill rate. “They had some good looks, they had some dangerous misses, but you get off to a start like that with the new units getting out there, I thought there were some good things.”
The Mammoth’s current four-game losing skid is part of a larger 2-5-3 run that includes last month’s overtime loss to the Ducks. Monday’s 6-3 road loss to the San Jose Sharks has Utah on its longest stretch without a point this season.
Lawson Crouse scored a pair of goals for the Mammoth, including a short-handed strike in the third period. But Utah was down 6-2 before the midway point of the game against the young and speedy Sharks, with a game against the Ducks offering a similar challenge.
“Our execution right now as a team is not really good,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “That is on all of us.”
Crouse delivered his first multi-goal game of the season, but was in no mood to celebrate.
“We need to be better. Everyone,” Crouse said after the loss.
JJ Peterka scored his 10th goal for the Mammoth. Utah points leader Logan Cooley has one goal and one assist in four games following his four-goal effort in a win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 24.
Karel Vejmelka allowed three goals in the opening 13 minutes against the Sharks and was replaced by Vitek Vanecek, who let in a burst of three goals in less than three minutes in the second period.
–Field Level Media
