Ducks at Minnesota, vs Wild

Hoping to forget the awful home opener, our Ducks made their first appearance of a four-game road trip tonight in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hopefully what the kinder analysts had to say would be true: an early road trip gives a team with a lot of new players the chance to bond, thus improving their game.

Some items of interest to look forward to in this game:
- J.S. Giguere will be in net tonight.
- Niklas Backstrom, an amazing butterfly goaltender in his own right, will be in net for the Wild. Offense will have to step it up on both sides to get by these veteran netminders.
- This will be only the fifth matchup of the Koivu brothers. Which team has the better Koivu?
- Andrew Ebbett and Nick Boynton will suit up for the first time this season. Yours truly is quite curious to see how they will do.

The 1st period of the game went scoreless, but I was happy to see that our Ducks didn't look like they were skating through quicksand (as they looked in their opener against the Sharks). Passes were completed, there were considerably less Duck turnovers in the neutral zone, and the forecheck looked good.

Our hometown heroes blew the game wide open in the 2nd period, with three Ducks earning their first goals as Ducks. Joffrey Lupul redirected a one-timer from Ryan Whitney into the net, before blocking a puck with his face later which sent him off for the rest of the period. Backstrom was beat a second time by a quick pass from Corey Perry across the slot to Evgeny Artyukhin, who hammered it home. The big smile on Arty's face afterwards said it all. And the third goal would come from Saku Koivu, off a rebound from James Wisniewski's bid on Backstrom.

It started to look as if our boys had found themselves. Ebbett added a welcomed element of speed and energy to the Todd Marchant-Mike Brown line. Grit and physicality dominated. Passing and shooting lanes were more effectively blocked, and some big hits were made. Jiggy looked top-notch between the pipes with great positioning and few rebounds.

Unfortunately, the 2nd period ended and the 3rd period began. Our boys started to look tired and less aggressive. Big George Parros got worked over in a fight with John Scott, and the game went rapidly downhill with three Wild goals (Koivu, Sykora, Belanger) that brought on OT. Wiz took an ill-timed roughing penalty and the Wild capitalized to win it.

It shouldn't have been. Our Ducks basically threw in the towel with 10 minutes left in the game. The defense isn't strong enough to withstand 10 minutes of continual puck chipping into the offensive zone and then trying to protect against the opponent's rush. Throw in a flat-out dumb penalty and... ugh.

Let's hope for a better outcome Thursday as the Ducks take on the Boston Bruins. If our Ducks can improve as much as they did from Saturday's game to tonight, I think they might actually win the next one. At least, it couldn't be worse than the last time they faced the Bruins (0-6).