On Thursday, the Detroit Red Wings look to rebound after losing four of their last five games with a matchup against one of the hottest teams in the league to start the season with the Anaheim Ducks. GM Pat Verbeek told everyone before the start of the off-season that he was going to be aggressive in getting his Ducks back to the playoffs and with a couple free agent adds and breakouts from young prospects, the Ducks are back and an 11-4-1 record.
It’ll be one of the season’s biggest tests yet for the Red Wings this season as they look to respond after losing 5-2 to the Ducks when on the road during their California road trip, two weeks ago. It’ll be the 99th meeting between these two clubs and it should be a good one as the Detroit faithful will bring their manic energy that they are known for to help prevent their team from losing their fourth straight.
The Red Wings had depth scoring carrying them through the early part of the season but over this recent stretch, the team has been far more reliant on it’s star players. Early season breakout Emmitt Finnie was stellar to start the season with eight points in his first nine career games but since the 20-year-old winger has gone seven straight without a point. To be fair to the youngster, he shouldn’t be so heavily relied upon to score at such a young age.
It should be the veterans that should be bringing some timely scoring with James van Riemsdyk, J.T. Compher, Andrew Copp and Mason Appleton all needing to contribute more, as the four have a combined one goal and six assists over the last seven games. Not to mention, many were expecting a breakout out of forward Marco Kasper after his red hot finish to last season but the 21-year-old Austrian has seen a slower than expected start to this season with three goals and no assists through 16 games.
A similar start to the season was recently seen by the Winnipeg Jets, where the team was heavily reliant on their top forward line of stars like Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor. In their most recent win on Tuesday, they saw a complete effort with four of the five goals in the 5-3 win coming from other sources besides the top forward unit. This needs to happen with the Red Wings as captain Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond as well as Alex DeBrincat need more help.
They may be able to finally put together a complete team effort Thursday when facing off against a very familiar face. The Ducks have been playing starting goaltender Lukas Dostal quite frequently with starts in eight of their last nine games and could mean he gets a night off as Anaheim goes to their backup in former Detroit goaltender Petr Mrazek.
The 33-year-old Czech backstop has a perfect 3-0-0 record this season but that has been mainly held up by his offense. Mrazek has a 4.57 goals against average and a .865 save percentage with 14 goals allowed in three games this season. If Mrazek does start, it should give the Red Wings a chance to finally spark some offense as they’ll likely need to if they want to keep up with the Ducks.
Anahiem’s forward group has received elite level scoring from across their lineup with their top line of Chris Kreider, Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry combining for 25 goals in 16 games. They’ve also seen production out of young talents like Detroit but at a much higher rate with Cutter Gauthier ranking second on the team in points with 20 in 16 games while 2025 first round pick Beckett Sennecke has six goals and five assists for 11 points just months after being selected 3rd overall as a 19-year-old.
The resurgence of the Ducks has also helped some of their older players like Jacob Trouba rediscover their game as the former Rangers captain has been playing some of the best hockey of his career with a team-best +16 rating with four goals and seven assists for 11 points in 16 games. It’s safe to say that if the Ducks’ offense, ranked second-best in the NHL, finds its rhythm, the Red Wings could be in for a long night.
DET ML (-139) | ANA ML (+115)
DET -1.5 (+165) | ANA -1.5 (-200)
O/U 6.5 Goals
It’s quite surprising after everything we just laid out, that the Red Wings are favorites in this game and that comes with the history between these two. The Ducks did beat the Red Wings just two weeks ago but prior to that, Detroit has won 16 of their last 23 home matchups versus Anaheim.
The Ducks have won just twice in their eight trips to the Motor City and will need to bring their best if they want to end their losing skid. Not to mention, both teams are slated for a turnaround game in the opposite direction of their recent trends as the Red Wings have lost three in a row while the Ducks are due for a loss with wins in seven of their last eight games.
The Red Wings will need to be mindful of Anaheim’s top scorer in Leo Carlsson, as the 20-year-old top line center has 26 points in 16 games, only trailing Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon for the league-lead. The Swedish export also has an dominant history in this matchup with points in all four of his career games versus Detroit with a goal and seven assists for eight points.
Detroit will look to respond with a healthy dose of Pat and Cat as the dynamic duo of Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat has been put on ice lately with Kane’s injury. Since his return, Kane has no points in two games and should respond versus a Ducks team that he has been able to excel against for years. The 36-year-old has 18 goals and 39 assists for 57 points in 53 career games versus Anaheim with a recent run of ten goals and 27 assists for 37 points over his last 25 games versus the Ducks.
Detroit: John Gibson (Season: 4-5-0 record, 3.15 GAA, .882 SV% | VS ANA: 27 Saves on 31 Shots, 4 Goals Allowed in One Start)
Anaheim: Petr Mrazek Expected (Season: 3-0-0 record, 4.57 GAA, .865 SV% | VS DET: 7-5-2 record, 3.26 GAA, .878 SV% in 16 games)
It was an impressive play that led to offense.
It just didn’t lead to any recordable offense for the subject of this story.
During the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 5-3 home win against the Washington Capitals on Thursday, forward Anthony Mantha scored the hosts’ third goal of the contest by cleaning up a rebound near the crease.
But the entire sequence would not have been possible were it not for Penguins defenseman Ryan Graves.
When a puck fluttered into the air and threatened to escape the offensive zone, Graves leaned his 6-foot-5, 225-pound frame down to keep the puck on the right side of the blue line as Capitals forward Nic Dowd whizzed by. That allowed Penguins forward Blake Lizotte to chop the puck toward the near circle and Penguins forward Tommy Novak took possession.
After Novak flipped a seemingly innocent backhanded dribbler on net, goaltender Charlie Lindgren didn’t cleanly absorb the puck, which Mantha cleaned up with a backhander.
Novak and Lizotte logged the assists on the sequence while Graves mearly got a plus.
“I think we’re going to have to look at that,” Graves quipped, in reference to how the scoring was awarded on the goal. “I don’t know about that one.”
A month prior, no one knew if Graves would make a return to the NHL.
On Oct. 4, the Penguins opted to put Graves on waivers. After no one claimed him — or his contract, which has a salary cap hit of $4.5 million and three years remaining (beyond the current season) — he was assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League (AHL) the next day.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the process of being on waivers for 24 hours is not ideal professionally.
“It’s tough,” Graves said Nov. 5 in Cranberry. “You want to be here. It’s a hard day, to be honest. You want to be in the NHL. I’ve been in the NHL for a few years in a row, and I’ve been fortunate to play in quite a few games here. I want to play a lot more.
“It’s a tough day. You take it and you move on.”
Graves took his assignment and made the most of it. Primarily stationed on the left side of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s second pairing, he posted seven points (one goal, six assists) in 10 games.
“You get a lot of opportunity to play,” Graves said. “You play in all situations. You play a lot of minutes, some of them (in situations) you might not play here. It’s nice to be able to build confidence and feel the game. And you can work, and you can make mistakes and you can keep playing because you’re going to play a lot. And you just try to build your game and build confidence.”
Some of that confidence came through working on Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s top power-play.
“Karl better watch his back,” Graves joked, in reference to Pittsburgh Penguins All-Star defenseman Erik Karlsson. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. When I’m doing that, my focus is not on how to run a first power-play (unit). It’s taking those reps to get comfortable with the puck and to be able to play with defenders close to you. To be able to create offense out of situations like that and just to feel the puck in the offensive zone, there’s something to that.”
As a result, when the left-handed Graves was recalled to the NHL roster Nov. 4, he returned with better assurances of his abilities, particularly when he has the puck.
“That was a big emphasis going down there was just take the opportunity to really play with the puck on your stick,” Graves said. “Play under pressure and get used to it. Play in those situations with a little more freedom to make mistakes. Not that you’re making them but just knowing that if it does happen, it’s not the end of the world. So, when you come back up here, you’re not going to make the mistakes and be confident to play in that situation. Trying to translate, trying to be poised with the puck, have clean breakouts, things like that. It’s a step in the right direction and I’m going to try to continue.”
Thus far, Graves has played in three NHL contests since being recalled and has posted one goal. Largely deployed on the third pairing with right-hander Connor Clifton, Graves has averaged 15:26 of ice time per contest.
“That’s a credit to the work that Ryan did going down there,” Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Muse said. “Making the best of the situation and controlling what he can control. From all those reports (from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coaches) and everything that we saw, he set himself up there for when an opportunity presented itself.”
Going to the AHL was hardly the best set of circumstances, especially for a player signed to one of the biggest contracts — at least by length — on the payroll.
But Graves made the most out of a bad situation.
“You can either go there and ride into the sunset and just take it with a bad attitude and be miserable, or you can go there and you can try to play and work on your game and get better,” Graves said. “It’s a good league, so just go there, put in work and try to come back.”