It’s so good to be back to NHL Hockey. As much as I truley enjoyed watching the Olympic tournament, it was bitter sweet watching Perry, Niedermayer, and Getzlaf celebrating while Whitney and Ryan hung ther head in disappointment. They really had so much to be happy about being they were being considered a long shot when the tournament started.
Last night it was back to business as usual for the Ducks. They had a fantastic first period getting solid checks and getting the puck in deep. Blake had a nice hard fought power play goal at 16:11. But with the Avalanche committing 3 penalties in the first period the ducks needed to capitalize on this opportunity and put the puck behind Craig Anderson.
Second period was quite a bit of a shocker. I’m pretty sure that the referees and linesmen were taking a nap for a good part of the period. The next goal was scored by Selanne but as much as i love the ducks, shouldn’t have been a goal. It was quite clear that when Selanne, Blake and Koivu were coming into the zone Selanne was about 15 feet in front of the blue line which allowed him to get in behind the defense men to get a puck on a platter from Blake. Needless to say by the end of the second period there were about 3 other obvious bad calls one being the “Charging” call on Mike Brown which put the ducks down a man late in the 3rd period. Its very clear that the Avalanche player sold the ref the Brooklyn bridge.
Third period was a fight that was unfortunately also won by the Avalanche. The Ducks continued to be plagued by penalties and on each occasion The Avalanche brought it hard and usually scored. With 2 more power play goals by the Avalanche in the middle of the third period the ducks had to keep pushing to even the gap.
With the Ducks down by 2 with 3:05 to go in the game Niedermayer puts the puck in the back of the net. Being a Ducks fan for quite a few years I know that the Ducks coming back late in the third period to tie the game is not far fetched at all. But with the score 4-3 the Ducks couldn’t get one more.
This game put an end to an 11 game home winning streak for the ducks. In my opinion they could have won this game. If they came out like they did in the first period and kept moving the puck in deep and stopped trying to make fancy plays they could of had a solid shot. It also didn’t help the fact that the Ducks had 9 penalties. out of the 7 goals total, 5 were on the power play. It’s nice to see the Ducks power play performing well, but at the same time it disappoints to see the penalty kill perform so poorly.
The good news is we have reinforcements on the way, with all the moves at the deadline yesterday we only had 5 defense men in the rotation, but in the coming days as the acquired get to southern California im excited to see what Saturday’s game is going to bring.
Avalanche 4 W – Ducks 3 L
