Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf: ‘We just have to get going’

Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf has one goal on 62 shots in 29 games this season, one of many reasons the team went into the Christmas break last in the Pacific Division and the Western Conference with a 12-15-6 record. His only goal went into an empty-net. He hadn’t scored yet in a 5-on-5 situation.

“If you told me I was going to have one goal at the break right now and we’d be struggling to score goals, I would have laughed at you at the start of the year,” said Getzlaf , who has a team-leading 19 assists. “We have to be better at all aspects of the game and that starts with us and myself. We just have to get going.”

Getzlaf scored 25 goals and 70 points last season and 31 goals and 87 points in 2013-14. He was sixth in voting for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most-valuable player last season and second in ’13-14. So, it’s not as if he hasn’t been a consistent scorer in the past for the Ducks.

“I had to get back where the game was slowing down for me, where I could get my mind where it needed to be,” he said. “And that’s not easy when you haven’t scored goals and you aren’t doing things and the team is struggling. I had a lot of things I think about. I tried hard in the last week to kind of mentally prepare myself before the game started. So that once the game started I could slow the game down and play at my pace. And I felt better the last week.”