Ryan Kesler sets defensive, offensive groove for Ducks

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Anaheim Ducks center Ryan Kesler doesn’t see a match-up against a team’s first line as sacrificing his own offense.

Instead, Kesler views it as an opportunity to not only stop his opponents’ top trio but also score on them.

“When you’re playing against the other team’s top line, usually they’re not very good defensively,” Kesler said. “It helps us out on that end if we can force them to play defense.”

This season, Kesler has excelled both offensively and defensively all while drawing the Ducks’ hardest assignments. His 0.32 goals per-game rank above his 0.28 career average and his 0.84 points per-game is his third best mark since he entered the NHL.

Kesler leads the Ducks in scoring with 31 points, and also holds a plus-3.11 adjusted 5-on-5 CF% Rel, meaning the Ducks hold onto the puck more when he’s on the ice than when he’s on the bench.

Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski, Connor McDavid, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, Claude Giroux, Evgeni Malkin, and John Tavares have all scored zero even strength goals and notched just four assists when matched up head-to-head against Kesler this season.

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“I hate seeing that puck going into my net and I take pride in keeping it out,” Kesler said. “My line has been doing a good job this year of shutting the other teams down. I think it’s experience. You draw on past performances and get their strength, get their weaknesses and really just mentally prepare every game.”

It’s tough to figure out why specifically this season at the age of 32 that Kesler has figured out a way to take his game to another level.

“I feel 19 again,” he quipped as a possible reason. But the chemistry on his line with current NHL iron man Andrew Cogliano and winger Jakob SIlfverberg, which was put together last season by former coach Bruce Boudreau and kept together by Randy Carlyle, has lent to a greater level of production.

“Obviously his line, and I think he’ll be probably the first to admit it, his line has been a very good line for us for about a year and a half now since they were first kind of formulated,” longtime teammate Kevin Bieksa said. “They’re able to not only shut down other teams’ top lines, but to have them in their zone for shifts at a time. They’re probably our best line offensively as well as defensively right now.”

In a recent game against the San Jose Sharks, Kesler’s line hounded the trio of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Pavelski. The only point they picked up came in 3-on-3 overtime without Kesler on ice.

“I think for our line we’ve been contributing more offense,” said Silfverberg who also scored a goal that game. “I think we’ve been playing the same, solid defense as the last couple of years but other than that I think we’ve been creating more offensively as well. By doing that I think the best defense is playing offense, so just ramping up our offensive game a little but and staying the same and playing with the same structure defensively, I think that has been the biggest key.”

The trio has given Carlyle a nice option if he either wants the team to score a goal, or stop a goal.

“I think they’re more than what you would call a shutdown line. If you look at their contribution to our offense to the all-around game – they’re salesmen for a coaching staff,” Carlyle said. “They do it the right way 99 percent of the time, so that’s really an advantage –not so much an advantage, it would be a luxury for a coach to have that group together and watch them execute and work and do the things that are asked to them on a day-to-day basis and a game-to-game basis.”

Kesler’s physical strength has always been his biggest attribute in going against the league’s top opponents, but it also goes deeper than just being able to outmuscle other players

“I think he’s very good in the neutral zone … getting in on the forecheck is part of being good defensively because you’re hemming teams into their zone, you’re not allowing them to carry the puck out with speed,” Bieksa said. “He’s very good in the neutral zone at getting above their speed, at getting above their centermen – not letting him get the puck and carry it down the middle of the ice. That’s essentially his territory, is the middle of the ice – the neutral zone and he makes that ice very hard for the other team to generate any speed.”

Said Carlyle, “First he can skate. Right off the bat, he’s a great skater – strong skater. He’s a gritty, determined guy and he takes pride on the defensive side of it also and he has been around this league for a number of years. He knows the nuances that take place and how you can gain an advantage and he’s always playing on the edge.

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As Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry – 11 goals between them – have struggled to score, Kesler has played the tough brand of heavy hockey that Carlyle has doubled-down on this season. If Kesler and his line can keep scoring and then Getzlaf and Perry find their range, the Ducks could become a more dangerous group as the season goes on. If Getzlaf and Perry can’t start scoring goals at a higher clip then at least the Ducks have a go-to trio on both offense and defense with Kesler, Silfverberg and Cogliano.

“Everybody focuses on me, the center, but to be honest my line has been playing great,” Kesler said. “We’ve been getting better. We’re all on the same page.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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