"The excitement in the room speaks for itself," Ducks captain Radko Gudas said. "We have a young group that wants to prove itself so I'm excited we have a pair of division battles to get started right away.
"Our training camp has been good. We put in a lot of work. Now we're excited to beat up on someone else for a change."
"We've got to play like we did in training camp, get off to a good start," head coach Greg Cronin said. "Most of the games I thought we did a good job with that. We had good structure early and good pace to the way we played."
I like the steps we've been taking and the progress since the end of last year," Gudas said. "I think we are way better now than we were at this time last year. It's a great step for us, especially from the young guys who have improved and are more confident this year."
"It was a better camp this year," Cronin said. "From our experience last year, it was more organized and the players were more familiar with what the expectations were. When you have that familiarity, everything goes quicker."
"[Brian Dumoulin] brings a lot of poise and a lot of experience," Gudas said. "We needed that, a presence to help calm each other down...We're trying to get pucks to our centers and wingers earlier and with more confidence so we can make more plays and get out of the zone."
"It's very tough to lose a guy like Gibby," Gudas said. "We're hoping for the best recovery. He's one of the best goalies in the league so it's a big hurdle for us at the start, but Dosty has been there for us whenever we needed him. He proved last year he can play big games. All the guys have a lot of confidence in him."
