Just seven hours after Friday’s NHL trade deadline, the Ducks will welcome back a beloved player whom they dealt earlier this season, defenseman Cam Fowler, and his new club, the St. Louis Blues.
It’ll be the Ducks’ third game in four nights after playing back-to-back matches in Edmonton Tuesday and Vancouver Wednesday, which they split behind a convincing 6-2 win over the Oilers and a 3-2 squeaker that went to the Canucks.
Coach Greg Cronin recently lamented his group’s performance on both ends of the special-teams battle, pondering where the club would be if it didn’t have to rely as heavily on five-on-five play and goaltending. The Edmonton game illustrated that, as they won big against a top team but went 0 for 2 on both the power play and penalty kill.
A night later in Vancouver, Brian Dumoulin’s second goal as a Duck gave them life but they came up short, failing to gain ground in the wild-card race. The morning afterward, Dumoulin was bound for New Jersey after the pending unrestricted free agent was dealt to the Devils in exchange for a second-round pick and prospect Herman Träff.
Dumoulin became the third defenseman to depart the Ducks’ organization this year, along with Fowler and Urho Vaakanainen, who was sent to the New York Rangers in the Jacob Trouba trade. For the first time this season, the Ducks have a defined sextet of regular rearguards. Two veterans, Trouba and captain Radko Gudas, man the right side with 23-year-old Drew Helleson (in the minors, righty Tristan Luneau has been dominant this season). Jackson LaCombe, Pavel Mintyukov and, now, Olen Zellweger firm up the left side.
Zellweger is tied for second on the team in on-ice goal differential. He ranks second among Ducks defensemen in points per 60 minutes behind this season’s biggest revelation, LaCombe, who has nine points in his last seven games. Yet Zellweger played only half a dozen games in January, the same six in February and none thus far in March, now setting him up as the main beneficiary of the trade.
He partnered frequently last season with Fowler, who will make his return to Honda Center, his home for nearly 1,000 games between the Ducks drafting him in 2010 and his mid-December arrival in St. Louis. Two weeks later, Fowler played in his 1,000th game, a triumphant two-goal effort at Wrigley Field in the Winter Classic.
As the Blues, who’ve collected 13 of their last 16 possible points, chase the same wild-card berth the Ducks seek (St. Louis was just a point back Thursday morning), Fowler has played, as he did last year for the Ducks, on the Blues’ top power-play unit and top pairing. His partner Colton Parayko will miss at least about six weeks (knee surgery), the Blues revealed Thursday after their 3-2 shootout win over the Kings on Wednesday. He appeared to injure his knee after an awkward fall in overtime.
Fowler assisted on a power-play goal by Robert Thomas in that affair. Thomas also netted the shootout winner, after extending his scoring surge to 11 games (17 points), tying for the third-longest active streak.
“A great player, he’s had a great career. He comes over, he’s got a great attitude and he’s having a ton of fun,” said Thomas, pausing to look up at Fowler at the postgame snack table. “He moves the puck really well, he’s a very smart player and he has fit in nicely on that top pairing. They have a tough task, they shut down the top lines every single night, and he’s excelled at it.”
St. Louis at Ducks
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Honda Center
TV: Victory+