Happy Valentine’s Day—Ducks showing “love” on the scoreboard

Boy, am I depressed lately, and it has nothing to do with being single on V-Day. As usual, I can put up with personal issues a lot better than I can put up with on-ice issues concerning the Ducks.

Anaheim's current problem now is not health-related, as for the first time in more than a month the team has healthy scratches, and currently nobody is even day-to-day. Good news, right?

Except for no good reason, the scoring and winning I've grown accustomed to have dwindled to a pleasant memory. Here’s a little month-by-month breakdown thus far:

Month	GP	W-L-O	Win Pct	GF – GA	PP%	PK%
October 06	12	9-0-3	.875	3.3 – 2.0	22.8%	88.7%
November 06	15	10-2-3	.767	3.7 – 2.5	20.7%	82.8%
December 06	14	9-5-0	.643	3.4 – 2.4	24.2%	83.3%
January 07	11	4-5-2	.455	2.7 – 2.8	20.8%	88.5%
February 07	5	1-4-0	.200	1.8 – 2.6	0.0%	75.9%

Yeesh. Talk about falling apart. Here’s two main points of emphasis:

• That 0.0% power play rate for February is not a misprint—the Ducks are 0 for 21 in 5 games thus far this month, spanning more than 35 minutes of power play time. Zero PP goals, while the opposition has managed to score 7 PP goals. Yuck.


• And while the Ducks have put 9 pucks in over those 5 games, those all came in two games against San Jose. The Ducks have faced four netminders thus far this month, and managed to put pucks past only one of them (thanks, Vesa!). 107 shots-on-goal directed at Tomas Vokoun / Mike Smith / Peter Budaj have yielded 107 saves.

So I don’t know what to think, really. Yes, the team appears to be playing well, but to score zero goals in 3 of the last 5 outings? That’s a lot of unrequited “love” (tennis terminology used here), and even if the team does deserve better, could this lousy performance be the trigger to a big “save the Ducks” trade?

Still, (sigh), we hold top spot in the Pacific for another day, so again, I’ll mute the complaints. Happy V-Day, all ya couples out there.