Anaheim Drops Freeway Faceoff Game in Shootout

The Ducks fell late in their Freeway Faceoff game with the Kings Saturday 3-2 in a shootout.

Despite an impressive 48 saves from Anaheim’s John Gibson the Kings offense did just enough to beat the Ducks Saturday at Crypto.com arena.

Things were close throughout despite the Kings controlling in most categories. Including, over doubling the Ducks shot on goal attempts for the evening. 

Although Anaheim struggled to keep the Kings out of the zone their offense was good on all lines about applying pressure down low. The Ducks brought the puck in low and looked to get into the dirty areas and play for tip-ins and rebounds.

Jakob Silfverberg opened up scoring on the night with his 9:33 snapshot. Ryan Strome and Cam Fowler grabbed the assist. The goal came on the power play against an L.A. Kings that have the league’s best penalty kill rate this season.

After that, Kevin Fiala added a snapshot just to the right of Gibson’s left at 15:23 in the first. The goal came after some good passing from Adrian Kempe and Drew Doughty.

Then in the second period the last of the regulation goals for the night would be scored. Sam Carrick added a short handed goal for the Ducks for his eighth of the season. Adam Henrique added the assist.

Drew Doughty would pick up his second point of the night with his power play goal at 14:24. Kempe would get his second assist of the night.

After an all goalie third period the game would head to overtime where only the Kings managed to put up two shots and neither team would score.

So it would be a shootout to decide who picked up two points in this edition of the Freeway Faceoff. A shootout the Kings would win 2-1. 

The season series is now 2-0 in favor of L.A., but the teams will meet two more times in a four day span in April. 

After the game Sam Carrick commented on how the rivalry still feels very much alive. Ducks Coach Greg Cronin said the team needed to take advantage of their even strength opportunities more.

Not only did the Ducks grab just one point, they also lost star talent Troy Terry. Terry while going for a loose puck got jammed up against the boards. He is listed as day to day with an upper body injury and will not play in Sunday’s matchup.

Anaheim heads into Sunday’s game with Nashville with a 20-34-3 record. The game is the first of seven in a row in the state of California for the Ducks. They host Nashville Sunday. Travel to San Jose. Then play five in a row at home. 

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Featured image via NHL.com