ROBBY:
Um, wow. I guess I'm sort of glad after all that this game wasn't televised—it was bad enough just listening to the Ducks fall 5-1 to the Sharks. In case you missed out on the finer points of our second preseason rout at San Jose's hands, I think this anecdote about sums it up: I wasn't able to get online to follow the game until about halfway through the second period. When I finally did, I opened up Yahoo's live scoreboard only to find that we had three shots.
Three shots. In 30 minutes of play.
As if the first two preseason games weren't bad enough, the Ducks outdid themselves tonight in getting outshot 49-14. I suppose I should be glad that the Ducks rallied for 11 shots over the final 30 minutes of the game, but that's just my inner cynic talking. Happily, I can report that the Ducks did lead the Sharks in one department, PIM. The Ducks amassed a dizzying 24 PIM on seven minor penalties and two fighting majors. The Sharks totaled 12 PIM, with 10 of that attributed to fights. Oof.
After the jump, I take my own shot at the ugly, the ugly, and the ugly.
The Good
-- Believe it or not, there was a bright spot or two tonight. By all accounts, Dan Ellis kept this game from being an absolute barn-burner. And while he gave up four goals in 40 minutes of work, he faced a staggering 36 shots through those two periods. That's nearly a shot a minute.
-- Peter Holland also had a strong game, leading the team with two shots (!!!) and a net zero rating. Holland racked up 15:54 of ice time, good for second amongst all forwards (Corey Perry had 16:21 of ice time).
-- We scored a goal on our lone power play when Ryan Getzlaf tried to make a pass to the back of the net. Huzzah!
-- Jonas Hiller was nowhere near this train wreck. Seriously, I can't over-state how good it is for his confidence, and the team's overall morale, that he was not on the ice tonight. As bad as things are, having Hiller face that much rubber would have only succeeded in pushing everyone even closer to the ledge.
The Bad
-- It's going to be hard to separate this section from "The Ugly," but I'll certainly try. Those 24 PIM are pretty gaudy, but at least two of those can be laid at the hands of the maintenance staff at HP Pavilion. When the second period was ready to begin, the Ducks were nowhere to be found. The referees assessed Anaheim a minor penalty for Delay of Game, which caused an already frustrated Randy Carlyle to lose it. As if things weren't bad enough tonight, even the clock in the locker room couldn't be bothered to show up either.
-- Nobody on the Ducks registered a plus tonight, while eight players finished with a minus rating. The worst offenders were Getzlaf and Perry, who each finished a -2. Perry also recorded four PIM in the game.
-- Why on earth is Francois Beauchemin fighting in a pre-season game? I know he's trying to show some heart, but seriously, pick your battles. He's one of our few healthy defenseman right now is a veteran who doesn't need to worry about his spot on the roster. Let one of the kids or fringe guys do that. To make matters worse, the score was 4-1 at the time of the fight with less than eight minutes left in the third period. It's just not a good move.
The Ugly
-- You did see those shot totals, right? In three pre-season games, the Ducks are being outshot 114-64. That's almost a 2:1 margin. I'll leave it at that.
-- Faceoffs also continued to be a problem for the Ducks, as they won only 18 of their 40 draws, good for a 31% success rate. That brings our current pre-season totals to 68 wins out of 168 draws, for an anemic 40.5% success rate. And we thought Andrew Cogliano was going to hurt us here.
-- The Ducks were just flat-out dominated. Again. They had better figure out a way to turn around this trend because they've only looked competitive in 3 of 9 pre-season periods to date (Periods 1 & 2 in Game One and Period 1 in Game Two).