Flip Flop

You wouldn’t normally think of the Anaheim Ducks and the Toronto Maple Leafs as having much to do with one another. But on Friday night with the Canadian team in town, the crossovers were hard to miss. Mike ...

Ducks Mash Smashville

The Ducks were looking to overcome a disadvantage on Saturday, but not the one you’d think. They were looking to overcome the boost that comes with being at home, which Coach Boudreau said late in the week some...

Ducks’ Outburst Continues

The Ducks exploded for three goals in a few minutes near the end of their Wednesday game to beat Ottawa. The explosion continued on Friday with the high-scoring (and high-goal-allowing) Dallas Stars on the firs...

Benched and (Almost) Redeemed

The Ducks have five fewer points that the Ottawa Senators, but they sit one spot in their division higher than the Sens sit in theirs. Ottawa was 6th in the Atlantic with 46 coming into Wednesday. The Ducks wer...

Simple DeDucktion

Aside from the specifics of what happened in the Chicago-Ducks game Saturday night, which I detailed in my story “Down for the Three Count” at IH, other things stand out from this series. First, the Blackhaw...

Down for the Three Count

Three things needed to happen for the Ducks to win against Chicago Saturday night. Their coach needed to be smarter than the Blackhawks’ Quenneville. Their goalie had to be at least solid if not great. And thei...

An Opportunistic Win

“Now the focus is off Andersen,” someone from the local Anaheim newspaper said this weekend. It didn’t take long for a bright LED spotlight to find the Ducks’ netminder again on Sunday afternoon. The first peri...

A World of What-ifs

“Don’t live in the world of what if,” my mother used to say. I was a worrier, and the more speculation I could entertain about what might happen, the happier I was. Her advice sought to rescue me from myself, a...

Four-Inch Vertical Leap

Bruce Boudreau never thought it was going to be easy. After all, he was trying to do something that he’d never done before, which was eliminate another team to end round two. He’d only ever been eliminated befo...

Twenty Strangers Out There

What was supposed to be different on Sunday night for Calgary: their goalie (Ramo instead of Hiller), a returned defenseman (Raphael Diaz—didn’t happen), Hudler and Ferland out due to injury (Ferland sat, Hudle...