The Anaheim Ducks will shoot for their fourth straight win when they host the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night.
Anaheim’s streak started with a 4-2 victory last week at Washington. The Ducks, still near the bottom of the NHL with 47 points, followed that up with a 3-2 upset win at the Carolina Hurricanes and a 4-2 victory Monday against the visiting Chicago Blackhawks.
Troy Terry scored in his third straight game since returning from an upper-body injury and added an assist.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of puck luck for a while,” Terry said. “The last couple games I’ve been getting the bounces.”
Max Jones had a goal and an assist, Mason McTavish had three assists and Frank Vatrano had two assists for the Ducks. Lukas Dostal made 24 saves as Anaheim won a third straight game for just the second time this season.
Defenseman John Klingberg (assist vs. Chicago) has nine points (two goals, seven assists) in his past nine games.
Jones broke a 2-2 tie in the second period and Terry added third-period insurance.
“That’s a hard game for those guys to play,” Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said. “We flew home the other night (from Carolina). Guys probably got in their beds by maybe 4 a.m. … Good on our guys for being ready, getting over that mental hump and finding a way to get the points.”
Washington’s loss to Anaheim last week was its sixth straight (0-5-1). The Capitals responded with a 6-3 win against the New York Rangers on Saturday but then suffered a 7-4 defeat in a clunker at the Buffalo Sabres on Sunday.
“It’s tough because it’s kind of been the story for the last month or so where after a good stretch of hockey we’re playing, we just can’t kind of seem to find it,” Nick Jensen said. “Pucks just keep finding their way into the back of our net, guys are getting discouraged and confidence is starting to shrink more and more as that happens.”
T.J. Oshie scored his fourth goal in three games against the Sabres, but Washington didn’t do nearly enough on defense in front of goalie Darcy Kuemper, who was lifted after Buffalo’s fifth goal and smashed his stick over the goalpost before departing.
“It’s just not good enough,” Oshie said after the loss. “The consistency of attention to detail for us right now has to be at an all-time high. (Saturday) it was there for us. Today it wasn’t, so you’re not going to last much longer being inconsistent like this.”
Though they remain on the fringes of the Eastern Conference wild-card race, the Capitals have dropped seven of their past eight games and have played more games than all but one of the five teams tied with or ahead of them.
The Capitals made a pair of trades Tuesday. They sent forward Marcus Johansson to the Minnesota Wild for a 2024 third-round draft pick, and traded defenseman Erik Gustafsson and Boston’s first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft to Toronto for defenseman Rasmus Sandin.
Gustafsson, 30, has seven goals and 31 assists this season, including 11 assists in his past 10 games. Sandin, 22, has recorded 20 points (four goals, 16 assists) in 52 games with Toronto this season.
–Field Level Media
