5 Takeaways: Freeway Domination
Ashley Landis / Associated Press
After a series of embarrassing performances against the Arizona Coyotes and St. Louis Blues, everyone knew the first Freeway Faceoff between the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings would be big. Safe to say, the team responded in exactly the way Dallas Eakins wanted with their best game of the season by far.
Here are my five takeaways from last night’s game.
1. Pure Domination
Every single Ducks skater had at least a 68 CF% at even strength. Everyone was also at least 60%+ in expected goal share. Isac Lundestrom had a 100 CF%. You read that right. The young Swede had 12 shot attempts for and none against. As far as shot attempts and play driving went, last night was an absolute massacre. I know it’s the Kings; not exactly the stiffest competition, but this is the kind of game that injects a much-needed shot of adrenaline into a down-and-out team.
2. Lindholm - Shattenkirk: Number One Pairing
Kevin Shattenkirk has been criticized quite a bit early this season. Some of it is deserved. He’s taking a lot of penalties and has made some glaring defensive mistakes. However, he also leads the team in expected goals for (he also leads in expected goals allowed, but ignore that for now). His partner, Hampus Lindholm, seems to be rebounding after a down year by his standards in 2019-20. The two are not exactly shutting down opposing chances, but they’re easily the best skaters Anaheim has in terms of creating what little offense they have shown so far.
Last night showed what those two together are truly capable of: an elite shutdown puck-mover combined with an offensive dynamo from the blue line. If the Ducks continue to see these two play like they did last night, there could be some surprises in store.
3. Gibson Gets a break
I’m pretty sure John Gibson was one game away from going rabid on his teammates. After being shoved out in front of a firing squad night after night, he finally got a light workload behind a stellar performance from his team. I’m sure he appreciated the breather before being thrown back into the war zone. Although the Ducks play a series against the San Jose Sharks this weekend. So maybe he can be hopeful of one more relatively easy game?
4. A rebound for Eakins
I’ll admit as someone who was happy the Ducks hired Dallas Eakins, he has been disappointing so far. While I believe he has been dealt a bad roster that doesn’t make his job easy at all, I had not seen anything to indicate that he was getting the best out of the hand he had been given. It may have been a bad team in the Kings, but last night offered a glimmer of hope on the coaching front.
On paper, the Ducks are better than the Kings. And they played like they were world-beaters against them. I saw a team with energy that rarely ever let up. I saw systems that created plenty of scoring opportunities and limiting play in their own zone. The Ducks winning games this season would be nice, but it’s not the most important thing to me right now. I want to see the Ducks with good fundamentals, exciting and fast-paced play, and players performing as we hoped. Not having any finishers on the roster won’t lead to an explosion of offense, but the coaching systems can at least be reflected in the underlying numbers. And that’s what we saw last night.
Let’s see if we can see this more consistently.
5. Lack of finishing talent
This is what Felix, Jake, and I have been talking about for more than a year now. Bob Murray says that he is expecting this team to win and be in contention for the playoffs. With the incredible underlying numbers last night, you would expect a team scoring at least four or five goals. To be fair, Cal Petersen had a fantastic game in net for the Kings with a 1.78 GSAx, but only three tallies (one being an empty netter) is evidence of a team that doesn’t have guys who can put pucks in the back of the net effectively. While underlying numbers are great, at the end of the day what matters is actual goals. You get actual goals by having a team with good underlying numbers and players who can finish. The team does not have the latter (at least ones who can do it consistently).
Even with a superhuman goaltender, making the playoffs with that kind of roster makeup is next to impossible.
All statistics courtesy of Evolving Hockey.