The Anaheim Ducks are limping into the playoffs

The Anaheim Ducks are losers of six straight, including a 5-0 home defeat at the hands of the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss the Ducks’ struggles and what they need to improve on as they prepare for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Lukas Dostal gave the Ducks some cover at different points this season, but they’re defensive play as of late … when you look at their expected goals against during their six-game losing streak: 3.3, 4.7, 3.6, then 2.2, then 3.7, 4.6 … you’re just not going to win games if you’re giving up north of 3.5 expected goals.

I get that their offense has been great, and even in a 5-0 loss to Nashville, they put 43 shots on Justus Annunen. But if you play well for six games and you run into a hot goalie, then OK, you’ll go 2-4 or 3-3 and who cares, you can shrug and say you ran into a hot goalie.

But you lose that excuse when you’re so poor defensively and the losses are piling up.

Carter Hutton: That’s the biggest factor here: the way they’re defending and what they’re giving up. It’s just not sustainable.

For the Anaheim Ducks, at this stage of their rebuilding after missing the playoffs and being back in it, there’s gotta be a bit of urgency. There’s team chasing you and this is going to be an odd finish from what we expected. I think at one point, we thought they could win the division, but now the wheels have fallen off.

I think it just goes to show you that defending and playing predictable, structured hockey is the most important factor at this time of year.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…