The Ducks must wait another day to clinch a playoff berth after the Dallas Stars handed the Colorado Avalanche a 4-2 loss Thursday.
Aside from whether or not they will participate in the postseason, the biggest question facing the Ducks in their home-and-home series against the Kings is who will be in goal.
Ray Emery did not practice Thursday, one day after leaving midway through the Ducks’ 6-2 win over San Jose with an undisclosed lower-body injury. Emery finished the game on the bench, while Dan Ellis finished the final 29 minutes between the pipes.
“I felt a lot better this morning than I thought I would last night,” Emery said Thursday. “It’s a thing where I’m trying to be cautious, because I’m leery of things I’ve had in the past and I want to be able to contribute when I’m in there for a long period of time. It’s more of me being cautious.”
Said head coach Randy Carlyle, “we felt it was best for him to work out off-ice and have a treatment this morning, and we’ll make an assessment tomorrow morning at the morning skate.”
Emery was not the only Ducks player missing at practice.
Forward Todd Marchant “was feeling ill after the game,” Carlyle said. “He was running a fever, had aches and pains. It looks like he has a case of the flu. … it’s best he goes home and has a rest.”
Jonas Hiller was on the ice, and even stopped a normal majority of the shots he faced in a shootout drill toward the end of the brief practice. Check out his thoughts about his availability for the final two regular-season games in tomorrow’s editions.
A couple more notes:
Kings head coach Terry Murray told reporters in El Segundo that Jonathan Quick will get the start Friday over Jonathan Bernier. Murray didn’t say so explicitly, but look for Bernier to start Saturday at Staples Center.
OHL prospects Peter Holland and Igor Bobkov showed well in their first AHL game Thursday, as both have joined the Syracuse Crunch for the remainder of the season. Holland, a center, had a goal and two secondary assists — all on the power play — and Bobkov stopped 43 of 46 shots in goal. The Ducks drafted Holland in the first round (15th overall) and grabbed Bobkov in the third round (76th overall) in the 2009 draft.
Jake Gardiner, who left the University of Wisconsin after the Ducks traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Francois Beauchemin/Joffrey Lupul deal, has played eight games for the Toronto Marlies of the AHL. The defenseman has no goals, two assists, a plus-2 rating and four penalty minutes.
