ANAHEIM \u2013\u2013 When the Ducks and Sharks stepped on the ice in recent years, remnants of a rivalry were all fans had to cling to for 60 minutes.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday, when the Ducks will host San Jose, both teams will remain in hot pursuit of a playoff berth. That would be the Ducks\u2019 first since 2018, when the Sharks swept them in Round 1, and the Sharks\u2019 first since 2019, when they made a pre-implosion dash to the conference finals.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be the latest in a series of hungry opponents for the Ducks, whose own appetite has waned at exactly the wrong moment. They\u2019ve lost six in a row, whereas the Sharks had won five of six entering a back-to-back set with the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday and Ducks on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing teams that\u00a0have\u00a0to win the game, and we have to win games here, that\u2019s where we\u2019re at,\u201d Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said after a 5-0 mollywhopping by the Nashville Predators<\/a>, who climbed back into a playoff spot with their victory Tuesday.<\/p>\n Worse still, since losing a four-point game to Edmonton<\/a> that set in motion a shift from cruising atop the division to fighting tooth and nail for seeding, the Ducks\u2019 game seems to be drifting farther away with each passing date. They\u2019ve been defeated decisively in their past three games and their special teams have been atrocious across the span of their funk, killing just two thirds of their penalties and converting on only 8% of power-play opportunities.<\/p>\n The Sharks were part of the slide, when they equalized and went ahead of the Ducks<\/a> in the final gasps of April 1\u2019s meeting in San Jose. The tenacious Macklin Celebrini, who has powered the Sharks with a jaw-dropping proportion of their offense all season, scored two goals and earned the primary assist on two more in the stunning 4-3 comeback.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did a number on him last game,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cHe got four points, but every time he touched the puck it was in our net. Let\u2019s deny him the puck as best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ducks\u2019 season circled the drain previously, during a nine-game plummet across December and January<\/a>. They responded with seven straight wins<\/a> under adverse circumstances then, climbing all the way to the top of the Pacific Division. There are but four games left in the season this time around.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gone through one, and how we came out of that one was basically, hey, playing ugly and winning ugly,\u201d Quenneville said.<\/p>\n For now, a division crown, which would be their first since 2017, is still in sight for the Ducks. They trail Edmonton, which has Connor McDavid but not Leon Draisaitl for the rest of the regular season, and Vegas, whose 11th-hour coaching change has paid dividends, by just one point.<\/p>\n But the Ducks are almost as close to falling out of the three Pacific slots and into the wild-card race. They\u2019re behind top wild card Utah Mammoth by a point and lead No. 2 Nashville by three points, which could come into play if the Kings, who are four points back with a game in hand, leapfrog the reeling Ducks in the Pacific.<\/p>\n San Jose at Ducks<\/p>\n When: 7 p.m. Thursday<\/p>\n Where: Honda Center<\/p>\n TV: Victory+, KCOP (Ch. 13)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM \u2013\u2013 When the Ducks and Sharks stepped on the ice in recent years, remnants of a rivalry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5127],"tags":[233,5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-547834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-anaheim-ducks","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-san-jose","12":"tag-san-jose-sharks","13":"tag-sanjose","14":"tag-sanjosesharks","15":"tag-sharks","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116370494278329370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}