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ANAHEIM — General manager Bob Murray sent the underachieving, goal-starved Ducks an unmistakable message when he placed Adam Henrique on waivers Saturday morning. Whether the Ducks received it was up for debate after a 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild at Honda Center.
It sure didn’t seem like it by night’s end.
“Obviously, it’s a message-sending move,” Ducks forward David Backes said. “It was like, ‘What? What? What is going on?’ It surprised a lot of guys. … Certainly, the cage has been rattled and the message has been sent from up above that the status quo is not acceptable.”
The Ducks’ third consecutive defeat looked a great deal like other recent games, when they had moments of inattention that proved costly. Their play was listless for extended stretches and they failed to generate the sort of sustained pressure that puts the opposition on its heels.
Instead of attacking, the Ducks (6-9-3) spent far too much time defending. Their bursts of activity with the puck were often interrupted by blocked shots or intercepted passes. The Ducks seemed to be skating through a forest of sticks and couldn’t break into the open.
The Ducks played without defenseman Hampus Lindholm, who was forced from their loss Thursday to the Wild because of an unspecified lower body injury. Lindholm was not placed on injured reserve and Josh Mahura was recalled from the AHL’s San Diego Gulls to replace him.
Lindholm’s status for the Ducks’ game Monday against the Arizona Coyotes was uncertain. Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said the team’s medical staff was continuing to evaluate Lindholm’s injury, which prevented him from playing the final half of Thursday’s 3-1 loss.
Eakins slotted Mahura into Lindholm’s spot alongside Kevin Shattenkirk.
Mahura had one goal and three assists in six games with the Gulls to start the season. It took some time for settled into Saturday’s game with the Ducks, but he found the puck on his stick and an open shooting lane late in the second period.
With Backes screening Wild goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen, Mahura whistled a shot from near the faceoff dot in the left circle toward the net. Backes then deflected it past Kahkonen to cut the Ducks’ deficit to 3-1 at 16:29 of the second period. It also gave them some life at long last.
“The second half of the second period it was like, ‘This is our game, where was it the first 30 minutes?’” Backes said. “Now all of a sudden, we’re on top of them, we’re getting sustained zone time, we’re knocking their transition down and we’re going back at them.
“We’re at a point where enough is enough, we’ve got to show we can do that for 60 minutes.”
As in Thursday’s game, the Ducks trailed 2-0 by the end of the first period, giving up goals to Minnesota’s Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Fiala only 1:10 apart. Fiala’s power-play goal three minutes into the second extended the Wild’s lead to 3-0 and added to the Ducks’ misery.
Victor Rask and Joel Eriksson Ek scored third-period goals for the Wild to make it 5-1.
“For me, it’s circumstance and how you handle the circumstance,” Eakins said of the Ducks’ plight through 18 games of the season. “You’ve got a choice to make. We’ve just got to keep moving forward, stay gritty and work our way out of this. This is supposed to feel bad right now.
“That’s the way it is.”
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