Ducks 5, Penguins 2: Anaheim Takes Care of Business at Home

Anaheim put five on the board and Pittsburgh could only answer with two, and that's the story in one line. The Ducks beat the Penguins 5-2 at home, and the scoreboard does most of the talking.

We're working from the final score alone here, so we won't pretend to know which period got away from whom or hand out heroes and villains based on hunches. What we can say is that a five-goal night at home usually means the home side set the terms of the game rather than chasing it. Pittsburgh needed to match that output and couldn't get there.

Two goals isn't nothing, but on a night when the Penguins needed to make it a game, it wasn't enough. A three-goal margin in this league is rarely a fluke.

As for the betting angle, DarkHorse did not publish a pick on this one, so there's no call to grade. Nobody on our desk gets to claim a win or a miss here, which is about the cleanest outcome we could hope for.

The Ducks did what home teams are supposed to do. Pittsburgh gets to regroup and figure out where the night slipped away. Check back in The Stable for the next one, where we'll have more to chew on than a final score.