Ducks Welcome Back Cam Fowler And The Blues Amid Defense Corps Shuffle
Ducks Welcome Back Cam Fowler And The Blues Amid Defense Corps Shuffle
Blog Article
Just seven hours after Friday’s NHL trade deadline, the Ducks will welcome back a beloved player whom they dealt earlier this season, defenseman Cam Fowler, and his new club, the St. Louis Blues.
It will be the Ducks’ third game in four nights after playing back-to-back matches in Edmonton on Tuesday and Vancouver on Wednesday, which they split behind a convincing 6-2 win against the Oilers and a 3-2 squeaker that went to the Canucks.
Coach Greg Cronin recently lamented his group’s performance on both ends of the special-teams battle, pondering where the club would be if it didn’t have to rely as heavily on five-on-five play and goaltending. The Edmonton game illustrated that, as they won big against a top team but went 0 for 2 on both the power play and penalty kill.
A night later in Vancouver, Brian Dumoulin’s second goal as a Duck gave them life but they came up short, failing to gain ground in the wild-card race. The morning afterward, Dumoulin was bound for New Jersey after the pending unrestricted free agent was dealt to the Devils in exchange for a second-round draft pick and prospect Herman Träff.
Dumoulin became the third defenseman to depart the Ducks’ organization this year, along with Fowler and Urho Vaakanainen, who was sent to the New York Rangers in the Jacob Trouba trade. For the first time this season, the Ducks have a defined sextet of regular blue-liners. Two veterans, Trouba and captain Radko Gudas, man the right side with 23-year-old Drew Helleson (in the minors, righty Tristan Luneau has been dominant this season). Jackson LaCombe, Pavel Mintyukov and, now, Olen Zellweger firm up the left side.
Zellweger is tied for second on the team in on-ice goal differential. He ranks second among Ducks defensemen in points per 60 minutes behind this season’s biggest revelation, LaCombe, who has nine points in his last seven games. Yet Zellweger played only half a dozen games in January, the same six in February and none thus far in March, now setting him up as the main beneficiary of the trade.