Mikael Granlund opened the scoring in the 1st, and Cutter Gauthier picked up an assist on it. Gauthier came in as the hottest stick in the league: 10 goals in a 5-game span, the first Ducks player ever to do that. The one box-score search behind this recap doesn't confirm whether he added a goal of his own, so all we can credit him with is the helper on the opener. Either way, Anaheim got the early lead it usually has to chase. On the road trip the Ducks kept falling behind and coming back. Here they led wire to wire.
Pittsburgh was also shorthanded before puck drop. Ville Koivunen was ruled out with a lower-body injury, which left a forward group already missing Bryan Rust and Elmer Soderblom one more body short on the second night of a back-to-back. On the blue line, Ryan Graves and Trevor van Riemsdyk are still out. Crosby, Novak and Malkin drove the Kings win, but they couldn't get anything going until the 3rd, and by then the Ducks could play the score.
The preview's biggest knock on Anaheim was defense: 3 or more goals allowed in each of its last 5, and at least 8 total goals in every one of those games. This one went the other way. The Ducks kept Pittsburgh off the board for 2 periods and allowed only 2, both in the 3rd once the result was mostly settled. Pittsburgh scored 2 in the 3rd and Anaheim matched it with 2 more, so the Penguins never got closer than 3 goals in the final 20 minutes.
For Anaheim, that's 5 straight wins. It has also won with 2 different formulas: comebacks in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, and now a front-running win at home. Troy Terry, Ryan Poehling, A.J. Greer and Ian Moore are all still out, and Joel Quenneville's team keeps winning anyway. For Pittsburgh, the win in Los Angeles now looks like a one-off rather than the end of the skid. That's 5 losses in 6 games, and the injury list isn't getting shorter.
The tougher question for the Penguins is the slow start. Over the skid, scoring wasn't really the problem: they put up 4 in Montreal and 3 against Utah while giving goals back. On Sunday they gave up the first 3 and didn't score until the game was out of reach. Tired legs explain one night. A team that keeps falling behind early has a bigger problem than the schedule.
