After finishing with the second-worst home record in the NHL last season, the Anaheim Ducks host the Utah Hockey Club in their 2024-25 home opener on Wednesday night.
Anaheim, home of Disneyland, also known as the Happiest Place on Earth, was definitely a pleasant stop for NHL visiting teams last season. The Ducks were just 12-26-3 at the Honda Center. Only the San Jose Sharks (11-25-5) had fewer home wins en route to an NHL-low 47 points.
The Ducks opened this season with a road back-to-back at San Jose and Vegas, defeating the Sharks 2-0 on Saturday behind a 30-save performance by Lukas Dostal before losing 3-1 to the Golden Knights on Sunday night.
Troy Terry scored a first-period breakaway for Anaheim’s only goal to tie it 1-1. Tomas Hertl scored the game-winner on a power play for the Golden Knights at the 5:18 mark of the third period and Pavel Dorofeyev added the clincher with 5:51 remaining.
“I thought it was a gutsy effort,” Terry said. “Guys worked hard. The difference is they scored a power-play goal and we didn’t. Just the things that make them a Stanley Cup contender. Those are just the little things that are part of maturing. And maturity needs to start happening now, myself included. But overall we played hard and put ourselves in a chance to win.”
The previous night, Dostal picked up where he left off in the 2024 International Ice Hockey Federation gold medal game in Prague in May, when he stopped all 31 shots in Czechia’s 2-0 victory over Switzerland. The 24-year-old netminder is expected to see the majority of starts to begin the season after veteran John Gibson underwent emergency appendectomy surgery in late September that will sideline him for three to six weeks.
Utah will be making the final stop of a four-game cross-country road trip that began with back-to-back overtime wins at the Islanders (5-4) and Rangers (6-5). The team, which relocated to Salt Lake City last spring from Arizona, suffered its first loss of the season on Monday afternoon in Newark, N.J., 3-0 to the New Jersey Devils.
Utah, which scored 16 times in its first three games, including a 5-2 home victory over the Chicago Blackhawks in its season opener, was blanked on 20 shots by Devils goaltender Jake Allen. It finished 0-for-4 on the power play while also picking up seven penalties.
“That’s something that we’ll address,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “That’s something our group knows that I don’t like, our stick, there’s a lot of stick penalties. We need to move our feet, work on body position better.”
Right wing Dylan Guenther is off to a hot start for Utah, scoring a league-best five goals en route to NHL First Star of the Week honors.
“I think you obviously take away from both (wins and losses),” Guenther said after the loss Monday. “I think it’s good to not get complacent. We beat two pretty good teams before (on the trip) and this is another team that’s probably going to be near the top. There’s always room for improvement every game.”
–Field Level Media
