Odds and ends from the Ducks' morning skate before Monday's game with Ottawa:
Value added … In case you were wondering, the Ducks were 15-15-4 before Scott Niedermayer return (a nice, easy-to-figure .500, in terms of points percentage), 12-7-3 with Niedermayer back in action (.642) and — going into Monday’s game — were 10-1-0 (.909) with both Selanne and Niedermayer. The math, then, is that you improve your winning percentage by .142 if you add one probable future Hall of Famer to the lineup, and and another .267 when you pick up a second.
No wonder a number of the Ducks were asked if the “swagger� is back in the locker room — and agreed it was.
“I think we feel it a little bit,� said Ryan Getzlaf. “We feel we can win on any given night, but it’s not going to be easy. I think that’s the main thing we focus on every night.�
Agreed linemate Corey Perry, “The confidence has been up, for sure. You get two Hall of Famers back a month and a half or two months apart, it definitely brightens up everybody’s day and puts a smile on their face. Now we know when we go out there we have a chance to win every single night. Not that we didn’t before, but it just got a little bit easier.�
… And subtracted? When Ducks coach Randy Carlyle missed last Friday’s game with Calgary because of the flu (“I had a fever,� he said, adding with euphemistically, “and I had a close friend of mine I couldn’t get away from very long�) injured defenseman Chris Pronger helped out behind the bench, handling the changing of defensive pairs for acting head coach Dave Farrish.
Carlyle was asked if he’d liked Pronger’s coaching, he cracked, “He’s going to have to take a hell of a pay cut.�
Responded Pronger, pulling down a tidy $6.25 million this year, “That’s why I said I wasn’t going to do it again.�
(Re)matchmaker: In another reminder of the silliness of the NHL’s schedule structure — which gets somewhat less silly next year, when every team sees each other at least once — Monday’s game was just the second time in more than four years that there has been a regular-season rematch of the previous year’s Cup finalists. The only other meeting since the league went to its three-year schedule rotation between conferences was Dec. 6, 2006, when Edmonton beat reigning champion Carolina 3-1.
Before that, the last meeting of Cup finalists was Nov. 26, 2003, when New Jersey and Anaheim tied 3-3.