Preview: Ducks Battle Sens in Annual Black (and Orange) Friday Matinee

The Ducks continue an annual Black Friday tradition this afternoon with a matinee game at Honda Center, today taking on the Ottawa Senators.
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Anaheim will host its 21st Black Friday game and a rematch of last year's matchup against the Senators, a 34-save shutout for Anthony Stolarz and 4-0 Ducks win.
The Ducks have hosted a Black Friday game in all but three of the last 20 NHL seasons and own a 9-7-4 mark all-time on the day after Thanksgiving.
Coming off of a 3-2 win over New York on Wednesday, the Ducks will look for back-to-back wins for the first time this season. Anaheim jumped out to a two-goal lead early in the second period and held on despite a late blitz from New York, earning the two standings points with some timely defense and a 41-save performance by John Gibson.

"We have had a bad habit this year, when we are tied or winning we go into this defensive mode and back off and try to not get scored on," Troy Terry said. "We stop bringing the game to them. I thought we did a better job of that [Wednesday]. I think we can still get better at it. At times, we could feel the pressure for them and we stopped trying to break the puck out and started giving it back to them and defending but the mood was good. I think it speaks volumes to how close this group is, with the adversity we've had to go through, to keep showing every day and putting the work in. To get that win and to be in that position after the second period, it was huge for our group. We were excited going out in that third period."
Terry gave Anaheim that two-goal edge early in the middle frame, beating backup netminder Jaroslav Halak with a goal quite similar to many of the career-high 37 he scored last season. The 25-year-old winger leads the Ducks in scoring (8-13-21) and assists, and co-leads in goals. He's also tied for fifth among league leaders in even-strength points (18).
"That's a shot that last year I brought into my game more and scored on last year quite a bit," Terry said. "Pulling it
and shooting it through the [defense]. It's one of those things where, when it's not necessarily going in, it's hard to keep doing the right things. For myself, it felt good to have one of those go in. That was how I scored a lot of goals last year, pulling it and shooting it through defensemen and that type of thing. I just got some space and tried to do that. It feels good for me personally that I was able to get a result."
The Ducks sit 6-13-1 on the season, but are 4-4-0 on home ice.

"We're getting better, especially over the last five games," head coach Dallas Eakins said. "We track a lot of different metrics and stats and we've been trending in the right direction. We still have a long way to go with a rebuilding team, but we are stepping slowly in the right direction."
The Ducks host a Senators team off to a similarly frustrating start to the new season, currently sitting at 6-12-1 and last in the Atlantic Division. The Sens have lost three straight, including the first two games of a four-game western road trip, and are coming off a 4-1 defeat Wednesday in Vegas.
"Disappointing," Senators coach
D.J. Smith told reporters that night
. "We hung right with them wire to wire. I don't know what the chances were, their goalie was really good. Probably too many penalties. We worked hard. We tried everything we could, we just couldn't score."
The Ducks have earned points in nine of their last 10 meetings with the Senators (6-1-3) and also nine of their last 10 matchups at Honda Center (7-1-3).