from Mark Whicker of the Los Aneles Daily News,

Whether NHL players actually sleep during the playoffs is debatable. It’s classified information anyway. But it’s doubtful that the Anaheim Ducks were walking the floors when they got home from their 4-2 win in Game 1 of this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series.

At least not without a couple of ice packs.

The Winnipeg Jets brought the lumber to Honda Center from the very first shift of this game. It was playoff hockey that you could hear, not just see. It was a contact sport, in boldface. And there were times in the early going when the Ducks were getting rid of the puck prematurely in order to dodge all those hits.

You can take or leave the “hits” statistics that NHL teams compile. Generally, if you’re piling up a lot of hits, it means you don’t have the puck very much. But sometimes it is useful to show the general state of play.

In this game, Winnipeg had 37 hits and the Ducks had 46, including eight for the Jets’ Mark Stuart and six for the Ducks’ Andrew Cogliano, who needed a stepladder to deliver a shot to 6-foot-8 defenseman Tyler Myers but gave it a try anyway.

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