Column: Ducks starting in a hole has a familiar ring to it
Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf mixes it up with Predators defenseman Mattias Ekholm seconds after a 3-2 loss to Nashville in Game 1 of their playoff series.
Adversity became a familiar companion to the Ducks this season, though hardly a welcome one. So it was nothing new for them to face the consequences of bad breaks and their own missteps again Friday, in their playoff opener against the Nashville Predators. But this time, they must find the answers within the compact time frame of a best-of-seven series, and that won’t be easy.
Filip Forsberg’s intended centering pass glanced off the skate of Ducks defenseman Shea Theodore and slid past the left leg of goaltender John Gibson at 10:25 of the third period to give the gritty Predators a 3-2 lead they protected, prevailing in a physical and intense game and taking away the home-ice advantage the Ducks had worked so hard to gain at Honda Center.
It was only one example of the adversity the Ducks faced, some of their own making and some simply misfortune.
Merely 35 seconds into the game, they fell behind on a goal by Nashville’s James Neal, made possible by a defensive mistake. They matched that goal later in the period and took a 2-1 lead early in the second period, but they couldn’t rattle the Predators and couldn’t get Nashville off its physical game.
“That’s playoff hockey,” the Ducks’ Ryan Getzlaf said. “A couple mental mistakes and it ended up in the back of our net.”
The Ducks also had to deal with losing defenseman Josh Manson after the first period. Manson, making his NHL playoff debut after an impressive regular season, took a thunderous hit from Forsberg late in the first period and did not return. In keeping with the league’s custom of concealing injuries, the Ducks said only that Manson had an upper-body injury and would not return.
That made things tougher for the remaining defensemen, Cam Fowler, Simon Despres, Sami Vatanen, Hampus Lindholm and Theodore, and it was a bad decision to pinch by Despres that led to the rush that produced Forsberg’s decisive goal.
But this wouldn’t have been the Ducks if there hadn’t been some drama involved.
Their remarkable recovery from a 1-7-2 start that had them near the bottom of the NHL standings in mid-December brought them a fourth straight division title, but it also brought them a difficult first-round matchup.
The Predators are mobile, solid defensively, skilled up front, and not above making plays that their admirers would call gritty and their detractors would call chippy.
They repeatedly stood up the Ducks at the blue line during the Ducks’ power plays, and the Ducks needed a two-man advantage to dent the Predators’ penalty killing, on a goal by Getzlaf off the rebound of a shot by Fowler that had hit the post behind Pekka Rinne.
“We’ve got to take care of the puck a little better,” Getzlaf said. “At points during the game, I thought we held on a little too long and allowed their forecheck to come to us.”
The game was emotional, hard-hitting, dramatic and thoroughly entertaining — all that playoff hockey should be.
The Predators had won two of the teams’ three meetings during the regular season, but their season series was over by Nov. 17 and that felt like a lifetime ago to the Ducks.
“We played Nashville at a time we weren’t playing well at all, so it didn’t really matter who we were playing at that point — we were getting beat,” Getzlaf said Friday morning. “Our game’s where we want it to be going in. We’re going to do our best to play our game and negate some of the things that they do well.”
The Ducks’ strategy to negate the scoring potential of Nashville center Ryan Johansen was to match Ryan Kesler against him. It worked for the most part, with Kesler not only shutting him down but giving the Ducks a 2-1 lead 48 seconds into the second period. Kesler, on the rush, took a well-timed pass from Andrew Cogliano and rifled a shot past a screened Rinne.
The Ducks protected that lead until Colin Wilson, with only one hand on his stick, redirected a centering pass from Ryan Ellis past John Gibson at 7:55, deflating the crowd’s jovial spirits.
“A couple of goals maybe were bad breaks,” Cogliano said, “but I think it was because we just weren’t playing that well. I think we need to be better.”
Follow Helene Elliott on Twitter: @helenenothelen
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