Preview: Ducks make their first visit to Utah for Sunday matinee

“I thought we played a pretty good game overall, 5-on-5,” Killorn said. “They’re an experienced team, they’ve won before, so they’re going to try to find ways to win and they did that tonight, especially on special teams, they did a good job. They scored on the PK, which really hurt, and then they scored another goal on the power play, they found a way to win, but all in all, like, 5-on-5 , I think we played pretty well.”

Cronin added: “I looked at the total number of shots after the first period. I think it was 12 to four for us, we had (no goals). But we played well, we played well defensively and it was frustrating that we couldn’t get at least a point.

“I thought the performance was felt everywhere on the ice, we won a lot of good one-on-one puck battles and we had a pretty good night at the faceoff point.”

Anaheim now heads to face-offs with Utah and Vegas before the holidays and hopes to win the season today against the NHL’s newest franchise. The Ducks earned a dramatic 4-3 overtime win in their first meeting of the season, earning the extra point over Leo Carlsson’s game-winning win.

“We knew it was going to be some kind of track and field race,” Trevor Zegras said that night. “We tried as best we could not to play a track and field meet, but they are so young, talented and fast that you kind of have to respect their speed. Stay inside and just play hard. It was a really good game.”

Utah is now in the thick of the playoff race and is currently riding a seven-game points streak to move within two points of Colorado for third place in the Central Division.

“The bench was rock solid,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny told NHL.com’s Jessi Pierce after Friday’s 2-1 win over Minnesota. “I think we defended well and kept them out as much as possible. “It’s hard to play against them. They have elite players, but they were really happy with the way we played against their top player in the second part of the game, not really in the first part, but I think we got better.”

Utah (16-11-5, 37 points) is in fifth place in the Central Division.