A pair of teams eager to regain the form they showed when the season began will meet Tuesday when the Anaheim Ducks play host to the Vancouver Canucks.
Anaheim snapped a five-game skid Saturday in the finale of a four-game road trip, while Vancouver heads to California after losing ten straight.
Anaheim opened the season with four victories over its first five games to show promise, then went into a funk before earning a 5-4 victory on the road against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday.
The Ducks overcame an early two-goal deficit to slip past the Flyers as Leo Carlsson scored his team’s first goal of the game near the midway point of the second period, then assisted on what became the game-winner when Beckett Sennecke scored with 12:50 remaining.
“Way better team game this game,” Carlsson said. “Obviously, to go down 2-0, they get a 5-on-3 (power play), it was a little tough. But (we) came back in the game. Pretty good.”
Carlsson’s heroics came against the team that signed him to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet in the offseason. The Ducks matched the surprising sum and refused to bid farewell to their budding star.
The team’s major investment has paid off with Carlsson’s team-best 13 points, 10 of them on assists. In his 11th game this season and 25th of his career, defenseman Tristan Luneau scored a goal and added two assists.
“When he has confidence, he’s insane,” Carlsson said of the 22-year-old Luneau, who was a second-round draft pick in 2022. “He’s just got to have the confidence all the time, because he’s a great defenseman in this league. He’s super fast, strong, can do everything. So excited to see his future.”
The Canucks won two of their first three games to start the season but have gone 0-9-1 since, including a 4-2 home loss to the Minnesota Wild on Sunday. After three consecutive losses on a short homestand, Vancouver is on a two-game California trip that ends at San Jose on Thursday.
Elias Pettersson assisted on a goal by Brock Boeser late Sunday and now has a team-best 13 points, with nine on assists.
The Canucks took 10 shots in the opening period to five for the Wild and yet still trailed 1-0 through the first 20 minutes.
“We had obviously a really good start to the game,” Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra said. “Exactly what we tried to establish early. Spent quite a bit of time in their zone. Got the shots we wanted. Everything but the score was a positive for us coming out of the first, and then weren’t able to maintain that in the second.”
Vancouver had just three shots in the second period and was outshot 29-7 over the final 40 minutes.
A trip to Anaheim might be just what Vancouver needs. The Canucks are 13-2-0 against the Ducks over the previous four seasons and have won seven of their last eight at Anaheim since December 2021.