What we learned from the Ducks’ 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators

What we learned from the Ducks’ 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday

1. Frederik Andersen is brave. Or foolish. He’s a goaltender, so he’s probably a bit of both. He took a puck on the mask from Nashville defenseman Shea Weber — who owns one of the NHL’s hardest shots — but kept his composure while keeping the puck out of the net. “It’s never fun to see your goalie go down like that,” teammate Rickard Rakell said, “but Freddie’s strong, and we know he’s going to bounce back.” And he did, stopping 27 shots to record the Ducks’ first road playoff shutout since John Gibson shut out the Kings in Game 4 of the teams’ second-round series in 2014.

2. Facing the possibility of being pushed to the brink of elimination, the Ducks reacted calmly. They hadn’t done that in losing the first two games, at Anaheim. They also were far more cohesive defensively on Tuesday. “As a group, they were responsible tonight. It was businesslike fashion,” Coach Bruce Boudreau said. “We got a couple of breaks, and when we got them, we put them in. That’s playoff hockey.”

3. So far, the road team has won each of the first three games of this series. Winger Chris Stewart said the Ducks felt comfortable playing at Bridgestone Arena. “For sure. This is a resilient group. We never doubted our ability,” he said. “We didn’t make it easy on us, but at the end of the day, it’s a race to four and it’s 2-1.”

4. Boudreau was very vocal after Game 2 about his team’s habit of taking needless penalties, leading reporters to believe he surely must have lectured his players about the urgency of avoiding infractions born of frustration or laziness. Not so, according to defenseman Kevin Bieksa, who said Boudreau didn’t blister the walls of the locker room with curses or threats. “When you’re in the NHL, you don’t need your coach to tell you when you’re taking dumb penalties,” Bieksa said. “We knew that we were undisciplined in Game 2, and it hurt us.” Bieksa said the team again took too many penalties on Tuesday, but the penalty killers were able to save them.

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