Ducks looking ahead to Hawks after rough start

One win. Nine losses.

Ten goals scored. Twenty-six allowed.

To say that the Anaheim Ducks — a team that nearly reached the 2015 Stanley Cup Final — got off to a slow start would be the understatement of the season in the NHL.

Superstar Corey Perry didn't score during that putrid start. Neither did Ryan Getzlaf or Ryan Kesler.

It looked like the season might be over barely after it had begun, and pundits were wondering if coach Bruce Boudreau was about to be fired.

But then the Ducks, in town to face the Blackhawks on Saturday, slowly began to turn things around.

They were still just 12-15-6 on Dec. 22, but Boudreau's team has gone 14-4-2 since and is beginning to resemble a squad that could make some noise in the postseason.

Those first three months were awfully tough, though, and Ryan Getzlaf admitted as much when was asked how often players thought, “I can't believe this is happening to us.”

“Lots,” he said. “You don't have the start we had without at some point sitting back and going, ‘What the heck's going on?'

“Throughout that first half of the year up until Christmas, it was scary coming to the rink every day. We didn't know what was gonna happen, what was going on, why we were not able to score.

“But fortunately the West struggled quite a bit at the start of (2016) and we're able to be right back in the hunt.”

The Ducks lost their first two meetings to the Hawks, the second coming on Nov. 27 when Marian Hossa and Duncan Keith scored in the final two minutes to knot the contest at 2-2. Artem Anisimov finished off the comeback with a goal in overtime.

Still, Perry points to the 1-0 overtime loss at the UC on Oct. 26 as a game that actually gave his 1-5-2 team confidence that things would eventually get better.

“We came in here and we played a solid hockey game,” Perry said. “It was 1-0, but we didn't give them a lot. And obviously they didn't give us a lot. I thought we played tight, we played our style of hockey. …

“We lost 1-0, but it pushed us forward into better things. It kind of helped us get out of that little rut that we were in.”

Perry didn't score until Game 12, but he now has 21 goals. Meanwhile, Getzlaf has only scored five times, but he leads the team with 35 assists, and Kesler is up to 11 goals after managing just 1 in his first 21 games.

The Ducks (with 60 points) are in third place in the Pacific Division, 4 points clear of Vancouver. They are in the middle of a seven-game road trip that has seen them lose in Pittsburgh, win in Philadelphia and fall in a shootout at Columbus.

Perry and Co. are certainly looking forward to Saturday's game and know the Hawks will be extra motivated after ugly back-to-back home losses.

“It's exciting playing this team,” Perry said. “It's a game that everybody gets ready for, everybody talks about. These are the fun ones.

“When you get to play the Stanley Cup champions and see where your game matches up, you go out and play your best and see what happens at the end of the day.”