Before setting out on a three-game Western Canada road trip, the Anaheim Ducks hosted the NHL’s hottest team, the Buffalo Sabres, on Sunday evening at Honda Center.
The Ducks were coming off a playoff-style and potentially fortunate 4-1 win over the Utah Mammoth on Friday. They entered the game with a three-point lead in the Pacific Division and had registered points in their last three games (2-0-1).
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Buffalo was playing their second leg of a back-to-back, as they defeated the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 on Saturday. They entered Sunday having won their previous four games and had won 13 of their last 14.
The Ducks coaching staff started this game how they finished the last, from a lineup perspective, with Mason McTavish listed on as the fourth-line left winger. Frank Vatrano and Drew Helleson served this game as the team’s healthy scratches. This was the final game of Radko Gudas’ five-game suspension, earned when he initiated a knee-on-knee collision with Auston Matthews on March 12.
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Here’s how the Ducks lined up to start this game:
Kreider-Carlsson-Terry
Killorn-Granlund-Sennecke
Viel-Poehling-Gauthier
McTavish-Washe-Harkins
LaCombe-Trouba
Mintyukov-Carlson
Zellweger-Moore
Ville Husso got the start for the Ducks in this game and stopped 24 of 29 shots. In the Buffalo crease stood Alex Lyon, who saved 27 of 33.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve done that this year, but it’s been an alarming number,” Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville said of his team scoring with the goalie pulled late. “It’s still not a recipe for success. The 4-2 (score) at the beginning of the period, that should have been something we should have nailed down and built off it.”
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This was as typical of a 2025-26 Anaheim Ducks game as one could have expected. They exchanged chances with Buffalo all game, made several consequential mistakes in critical areas of the ice, got some luck, got some big saves from Husso when the game could have gotten out of hand, and once again, outscored their problems.
The underlying numbers don’t exactly paint that picture. They dictated pace and possessed pucks in elongated spurts throughout this high-event matchup. At 5v5, the Ducks won the shots on goal battle 27-26 and the expected goals battle 3.06-2.9, but lost the shot attempts battle 57-53.
D-Zone Coverage: Buffalo generated several long cycle sequences in this game, feeding their talented defensemen at the point and winning battles in the small areas of the zone. Tired legs would often give way to tired minds, and the net-front defenders were caught puck-watching on several occasions, leaving open slot attackers in prime locations.
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Defense Rotation: The Ducks’ top four defensemen (LaCombe, Trouba, Carlson, Mintyukov) all notched well over 20 minutes TOI, while the bottom pair was short-shifted, especially as the clock was winding down. Zellweger and Moore were the only two defensemen on the Ducks with negative expected goals shares, and they were the biggest culprits of the poor defensive zone habits stated above. They weren’t as effective on breakouts as they’d been in previous games together, and when plays became sloppy, they had trouble adjusting and sorting out their assignments.
Jackson LaCombe: LaCombe went toe-to-toe with one of the NHL’s potential Norris Trophy finalists in Rasmus Dahlin and was equally as impactful, dictating pace, creating offense, and killing plays early on the defensive side of the puck in all three zones. LaCombe is an elite rush defender whose poise won numerous transition battles, which he then turned up ice into rush offense. He logged a pair of points while playing the vast majority of his 23:56 TOI at even strength.
The Ducks will hit the road for a three-game trip to face their Canadian Division opponents (Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers), starting with the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday at 7 PM PST.
Takeaways from the Ducks 4-1 Win over the Mammoth
