MONTREAL, Que. – The Anaheim Ducks are finally back to full strength, and while a new Duck made his debut, it was the old standards that put Anaheim back on track to close its four-game road trip.
A pair of Leo Carlsson goals put the Ducks out front, a three-point night in Troy Terry’s return brought Anaheim back level, and Cutter Gauthier’s team-leading 34th goal put the Ducks over the top in a 4-3 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Sunday at Centre Bell.
Lukáš Dostál made 27 saves in the victory. John Carlson, acquired from Washington at the trade deadline, returned from a lower-body injury and made his Ducks debut, skating on a team-high 31 shifts and second-best 22:59 time-on-ice.
"He’s a really good hockey player," Terry said of Carlson on the Victory+ broadcast. "He’s someone that I’ve always really appreciated how he plays the game. He plays the right way. He’s poised. He just seems calm. You could feel that tonight.”
Anaheim tied Montreal with a league-high 21 comeback victories, and the Ducks bounced back from its fifth goalless effort of the season just over 24 hours prior in Ottawa on Saturday.
After a 7-2-0 homestand vaulted the Ducks into first place in the Pacific Division and a dominant win in Winnipeg on Tuesday opened a three-point lead, Anaheim slid out of the top spot with a collapse in Toronto on Thursday and a feckless game in Ottawa. The Ducks leveled the road trip with the win in Montreal and jumped back into first place headed back to Orange County.
Anaheim (37-27-3, 77 points) holds a 16-6-0 record in its last 18 games and holds a one-point division lead over Vegas (31-22-14, 76 points) and a two-point lead over Edmonton (33-26-9, 75 points) with 15 games to play.
Anaheim and Vegas are even on games played, both with one fewer than Edmonton.
Seattle (31-26-9, 67 points) is six points behind Anaheim in the second wild card with one fewer game played.
While the Ducks return home on Wednesday to host Trevor Zegras and the Philadelphia Flyers, Anaheim’s next three home dates are one-game pop-ins for what can be considered an extended road trip.
The Ducks host the Flyers on Wednesday, are in Utah on Friday, and host Buffalo next Sunday before heading back to Canada for a three-game western trip through Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
Anaheim then hosts Toronto in a Radko Gudas suspension-fueled grudge match on March 30 and open April in San Jose before the final home stretch of the season.
Troy Terry Returns
After a nine-game absence due to an upper-body injury–the same injury that forced him out of 11 games in January, Troy Terry gives the Ducks their first fully healthy line-up since December.
The only Ducks missing from Sunday’s full roster, including scratches, were Radko Gudas serving the second game of his five-game suspension and back-up goaltender Petr Mrazek, who is out for the season following hip surgery.
Terry scored his first goal since Jan. 2 and firs three-point game since Dec. 29.
“(I felt) good,” Terry told the Victory+ broadcast. “I tried to just keep it simple early. When you're playing with those two guys (Leo Carlsson and Chris Kreider) and Leo’s carrying the puck and Kreids is making space, it’s easy. It felt good to be back and in the mix with everyone else.”
Despite missing those 20 games due to injury, Terry’s return and his season numbers speak to the impact the longest-tenured Duck has on this Anaheim roster.
Terry has 48 points in 47 games, which is still the team’s fourth-highest points total, and his 34 assists are still second on the Ducks.
“You look at his numbers there,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville told The Athletic's Eric Stephens in Montreal, “he’s a plus player. Plays important minutes for us. It’s a big, big add to our team when he’s back in there. Gives you a lot of options.”
Mason McTavish Healthy Scratch
With Terry’s return to a full Anaheim forward corps, as Quenneville said, there were plenty of options for line combinations and who would ultimately come out of the line-up. In a surprise, it was Mason McTavish who drew the short straw and his first healthy scratch of the season.
McTavish has recently not played to the form you want to see from a supposed franchise cornerstone, who signed a six-year, $42 million contract after a training camp holdout in September.
The healthy scratch capped a particularly rough stretch of one assist in nine games and two assists in 12 games.
McTavish had been bumped down to the third line in the stretch of play out of the Olympic break, and when Mikael Granlund returned to the line-up last Sunday, the 23-year-old center was sent to the wing.
McTavish was back at center on Tuesday in Winnipeg and Thursday in Toronto before returning to winger in his hometown Ottawa on Saturday.
In his 10 games at five-on-five since the Olympic break, McTavish registered just four games at over 50% expected goal share and three games with a sub-20% expected goal share. McTavish had just nine shots on goal and posted a 42.5% face-off percentage, nearly seven points below his season average 49%.
