ANAHEIM –– Halfway through their longest homestand of the season, the Ducks remained in search of their first win after a 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Friday night at Honda Center dropped them to 0-3-0 during this residency.
After stumbling against lowly Chicago, the Ducks have faced two of the NHL’s best road teams in Vancouver and Minnesota, and fallen hard against both. The Ducks (4-7-2) have been gracious hosts, allowing their guests to compile an 14-5 aggregate score in those three matches.
“The frustration is at a super-high level,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “I think any team – no matter how good you are or how old you are or how young you are – when you’re not scoring like we’re not scoring, it’s like the balloon just keeps getting bigger and bigger. We’re just waiting for it to pop, in a good way, and get goals.”
Robby Fabbri scored his 100th career goal and Mason McTavish tacked on an academic goal in the final minute, while Lukáš Dostál came up with 25 of 30 saves.
Jake Middleton, Marcus Foligno and Kirill Kaprizov each scored a first-period goal for Minnesota (10-2-2). Kaprizov added an assist on Marco Rossi’s third-period insurance marker and scored a power-play goal assisted by Rossi, which vaulted Kaprizov to the top of the NHL’s points leaderboard with a two-point lead. Brock Faber contributed two assists and Filip Gustavsson stopped 32 of 34 shots.
“He’s our star player. When he’s going, the whole bench is going,” Foligno said of Kaprizov.
The Ducks produced some sparks early, but Minnesota summarily took control of the game in a hail of missed shots and coverages by the home team. The Wild put up goals at the 7:31, 9:11 and 12:32 marks of the first period.
Joel Eriksson-Ek’s sharp-angle shot and recovery allowed him to find Middleton in the high slot unmarked, where he picked his spot for a wrist shot to make it 1-0.
Middleton was up on a two-on-one rush with Foligno that developed in large part because Radko Gudas got tripped up in the offensive zone. As the duo zoomed in on Jackson LaCombe, Foligno elected to keep the puck and fire it past Dostál. Frederick Gaudreau’s assist on the play extended his scoring surge to six games.
Cronin pointed to the common thread of lost faceoffs in the opponents’ end that turned promise into calamity, a common theme for the Ducks, who’ve won an NHL-worst 42.7% of their draws.
“Again, it’s this faceoff thing. We’ve got an offensive-zone draw and an opportunity to try to pin them in their own zone after an icing and then it goes right back down to our end and into the back of our net,” Cronin said. “The second goal was another faceoff … we lost a draw and tried to get the puck back, then we had a pinch, we didn’t have a fill for the pinch and they went down on a two-on-one and scored.”
During a delayed penalty, Kaprizov levitated from the left point to the right faceoff dot, where he settled the puck and effortlessly burst forth with a perfectly placed shot to reach 3-0.
In the second period, the Ducks generated more opportunities, including a Trevor Zegras penalty shot, a sterling chance for Ross Johnston and bids in quick succession from Frank Vatrano and Troy Terry. All that and their 14-11 shot edge in the second period left no impression on the score, which remained 3-0.
The third period delivered the first Ducks goal, just 2:16 into the frame. Fabbri, whose work ethic was prominently displayed, beat Kaprizov to the puck just outside the Minnesota zone before he darted across the blue line and tucked a shot under the arm of Gustavsson. It was Fabbri’s second goal as a Duck and the 100th of his career.
“Individually, it’s something that’s nice that you’re excited about, but at the end of the day, individual stats aren’t as exciting when your team isn’t winning,” Fabbri said.
Further thickening the plot were two penalties – Matt Boldy’s hooking minor and Zach Bogosian’s double-minor for high-sticking – that effectively gave the Ducks six minutes of interrupted man-advantage time while trailing by two goals.
It was all for naught.
“I don’t know if we had two scoring chances on them in six minutes of power-play [time],” Cronin said. “Then we could just feel it, it drained the crowd and the bench went back to looking for some sort of energy offensively.”
Not only did the Ducks’ power play, which had clicked of late with four goals in as many games, fail to convert on those three opportunities and three prior ones Friday, but the Wild put the game away 68 seconds later.
LaCombe’s ostensibly safe pass behind his own net to defense partner Olen Zellweger unraveled as it hit the side of the cage and came directly to Kaprizov, who found Rossi all alone at the back post for an uncontested tap-in with 5:40 left.
Later, Rossi’s deflection was denied by a brilliant save by Dostál, but Kaprizov sneaked through a crowd to stuff in the rebound for a power-play goal with 2:16 to play.
As he did against Chicago, McTavish scored in the dying gasps of the match, this time redirecting a Gudas point shot 13 seconds before the final horn and a melee that ensued at center ice.