The Western Conference Second Round swings back to Honda Center with the Ducks in a hole. Vegas took Game 3 by a 6-2 score behind a Mitch Marner natural hat trick, and now Anaheim's young core gets one more home crack before the math turns ugly. Puck drops at 8:35 PM ET.
Anaheim's series so far has been a coin flip with one bad shift attached. They stole Game 2 in Vegas with Lukas Dostal stopping 21 of 22, then watched Dostal get yanked after surrendering 3 goals on 8 shots in the first period of Game 3. Joel Quenneville hedged on the starter postgame but the latest word is Dostal gets the net back. Mason McTavish is also back in the lineup, which Anaheim absolutely needs against a Vegas group that looked a step quicker through the neutral zone in Game 3.
The big swing factor is on the other bench. Mark Stone left Game 3 in the first period with a lower-body issue and never returned for the third. Vegas didn't need him with Marner cooking and Carter Hart turning aside 30, but losing the captain in a road building is the kind of thing that flips a series — especially against a Ducks team that won all 3 regular-season meetings, every one by a 4-3 score.
John Tortorella's stamp on this Vegas group is showing. He took the bench with 8 games left in the regular season, ripped off a 7-0-1 finish, grabbed the Pacific, and now has the Knights playing the kind of buttoned-up forecheck that buried Anaheim in Game 3. Marner leads all skaters in the postseason with 13 points (6 goals, 7 assists), so the Ducks can't keep losing the special-teams battle and expect to skate around it.
Anaheim's edge is the building and the legs — Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Beckett Sennecke, Jackson LaCombe. They've had every reason in this series to be the team that's overmatched and they're not. But they're also one bad period from going down 3-1 with travel to Vegas next, and Carter Hart has looked steady enough that they can't bank on stealing one cheap. Win this and it's a series. Lose it and the road back is a hard one.