Fresh off a 4-3 loss to the Arizona Coyotes in overtime Monday, Anaheim Ducks head coach Bruce Boudreau joined Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet Fan 590 as a guest Tuesday.
Boudreau talked his team’s offensive struggles through the first month of the season, captain Ryan Getzlaf’s brutal giveaway in overtime that ostensibly cost the Ducks the game, and his approach to 3-on-3 overtime.
Asked about the Ducks’ seeming inability to find the back of the net early in the 2015-16 season, Boudreau didn’t have an easy answer.
“I wish I could put my finger on it,” Boudreau said. “There’s a lot of great goal scorers on our team that haven’t scored at all…Ryan [Getzlaf] being one, Corey [Perry] got two, Kesler got his first last night, Silfverberg, who averaged over a point a game in the playoffs last year, hasn’t got a goal yet.
“I can see the tension when they’re holding the stick and when they get opportunities to score and it’s not happening…I’m sure at night it eats at them.”
The Ducks have managed a 5-7-3 record through 15 games despite scoring an NHL-low 25 goals. Great defence and goaltending have been critical to the Ducks’ effort to keep from falling too far behind in the Pacific Division.
“With us right now we have to play a pretty stingy defensive game to be successful when you’re only averaging a goal and half a game offensively,” said Boudreau.
Getzlaf gave Coyotes forward Mikkel Boedker a gift Monday in the form of a drop pass to no one in particular, which resulted in a breakaway and subsequent overtime winner for Arizona. It was a terrible play, but not something Getzlaf’s teammates bothered to get worked up over or even use as a gentle source for ribbing when it came to Tuesday’s practice.
“Everybody knew that Ryan felt really bad about it. I didn’t hear anything in practice today regarding the drop pass at all. He knows he made a blunder…you just let it go. I guarantee tomorrow night he’ll be really good. He’s got a lot of pride in his game.”
The Ducks appeared poised to pick up their fifth consecutive win Monday before Anthony Duclair and Max Domi spearheaded a Coyotes’ comeback, setting the stage for the drama in overtime. Boudreau noted that he has a plan for his team heading into 3-on-3 overtime, but it’s a work in progress.
“Well, we definitely haven’t been successful at it [3-on-3 OT]. We’re 0-2 in it,” Boudreau said.
“We definitely have a plan when we go out there in overtime, we talk to the guys that are going out there. They know what they’re supposed to do…we’ve watched it on TV a lot and we see where it’s successful and it’s not successful. Obviously it would be silly for me to say, but managing the puck is one of the most important things.”
While it’s easy to point to the offensive struggles of usually reliable producers like Getzlaf and Perry as an easy explanation for a team’s scoring troubles, Boudreau recognizes that it’s hardly a wide-open offensive game anymore, noting that scoring is down across the league.
“Coaches are good at defending. Goaltending is better than it’s ever been than any point in history of the NHL.
“The other thing I think, in the past you never even thought about the playoffs until January or February. Now, every game from Day One is contested as a ‘gotta win’ because you need the points for the playoffs. All those things add up usually a low scoring game and very tight checking game.”