This is my kind of town,
Chicago is my kind of town,
Chicago is my kind of people too,
People who smile at you
– Frank Sinatra singing his most famous song about a large city in America
After bringing joy to the shorts and polo shirt-wearing denizens of not-quite-NYC (Long Island), the Ducks continued their East Coast community service and made the Wall Street bankers of actual-NYC smile* more than when the meme stock Gamestop crashed in 2020. New York City might be the concrete jungle wet dream tomato, but it was no wet dream tomato for the Ducks as they were stomped 6-4 by the New York Rangers.
*In reality, more like a grimace – have you ever seen a New Yorker actually smile?
At Least They Didn’t Allow Seven?
While they allowed one less goal than their blowout loss to the Islanders, amazingly most statistics actually point to the Ducks playing worse defensively against the Rangers. Compared to 22 scoring chances for the Islanders in the previous game, the Ducks allowed 45 scoring chances for the Rangers with an eye-watering 22 (48.89%!) of them being high danger chances.
The defense was outskated, breakouts were repeatedly stifled, and Shattenkirk was again Shattenkirk. Thankfully Eakins held him responsible with time on the penalty kill reduced to only 2 shifts for a total of 1:16, but the Ducks performance pointed to a deficiency in the entire defensive corps as they allowed 9 power play scoring chances for the Rangers with 44.44% of them being high danger. Naturally, this led to New York scoring on 3 out of 4 power plays.
But They Also Scored Four!
On the upside, the Ducks’ offense was encouraging to watch as they managed to capitalize on a meager 35.19% Corsi For Percentage by scoring four goals with only 8 high danger scoring chances.
Both the first and fourth lines shone as the first-line combination of Henrique-Zegras-Terry had a Corsi For Percentage of +31.90% relative to when they weren’t on the ice, with Zegras outmaneuvering the Rangers defense off a crisp pass from Terry to score the second Ducks goal of the night.
Similarly, the fourth-line combinations of Regenda-Grant-Jones and Regenda-Lundestrom-Jones had a relative Corsi For Percentage of +20.19% and +30.30% respectively, with Regenda – the Ducks’ new acquisition for the season – having two assists.
Although overshadowed by the 6 goals allowed, scoring 4 goals against a Vezina favorite is respectable and suggests that wins may be within reach if the Ducks’ defense can rise above their current challenges.
At Least We Don’t Have This L
Maybe things aren’t so bad for Ducks fans (who don’t live in NYC) after all.
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All statistics sourced from Natural Stat Trick.
The Morning Skate 