Maybe if the last three weeks had played out differently, the Anaheim Ducks\u2019 return to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in eight years would be filled with hope. After all, they talked before the season about how it was time, and they backed it up. Promise fulfilled.<\/p>\n
This is supposed to be the moment when a franchise that\u2019s been through a lot of low points can celebrate jarring loose a championship window that had been slammed shut. When Troy Terry, now the Ducks\u2019 longest tenured player, can finally feel what playoff hockey is like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, this is all new for me, so I\u2019m just excited,\u201d said Terry, who was a Black Ace for the club when it made its last playoff appearance in 2018. \u201cI\u2019m excited for our fan base. I\u2019m excited for a lot of people in this organization and just around Orange County.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is nice to be set and know where we\u2019re going. Obviously, they\u2019ve got two of the best players in the world. They create their own challenges, and I\u2019m excited. I think it\u2019ll be a good series.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u201d are Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers, the Ducks\u2019 opponent for the best-of-seven series that gets underway at Rogers Place on Monday. After Game 2 in Edmonton on Wednesday, the series shifts to Anaheim, where Honda Center will host its first playoff game since Game 2 of the 2018 first round against the San Jose Sharks.<\/p>\n
Whether it will be a good series, much less a victorious one against the team that\u2019s reached the last two Stanley Cup finals, will hinge on Anaheim repairing significant cracks in its defense, goaltending and special teams.<\/p>\n
What the Ducks showed at the end of the regular season brought more concern than confidence. It has been a season of swings in qualifying with a 43-33-6 record and 92 points. There were a club-record 26 comeback victories, plenty of third-period rallies, all the dramatic overtime and shootout wins. It also masked their year of living dangerously. A 2-6-2 finish not only ended their bid to win the Pacific Division, but it may have revealed a team that isn\u2019t ready for the playoff spotlight.<\/p>\n
A 5-4 victory over the Nashville Predators in Thursday\u2019s regular-season finale only reinforced the narrative they\u2019ve built. The Ducks needed a third-period rally against the golf course-bound Predators to snap out of their late-season funk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to win a game,\u201d Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said postgame at Bridgestone Arena. \u201cI know we lost a couple of close ones here in the last little bit. We had a little tough stretch going into the playoffs, and (it\u2019s) nice having some positivity entering a real tough series ahead of us. Hey, we\u2019re excited about playing playoff hockey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the last period we got ignited there. Let\u2019s get excited about these playoffs. Don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be an on-off switch come playoff time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ducks have played a wide-open brand of hockey this season, and Quenneville has, by and large, embraced that to maximize the roster\u2019s speed and skill. It has resulted in significant improvement offensively. They scored 48 more goals than last season, jumping up from 30th in the NHL (2.65 goals per game) to 13th (3.23).<\/p>\n
A balanced attack fueled the 265 goals that surpassed the previous club-best of 263 set in 2013-14. Nearly half of those came from their 22-and-younger contingent. Cutter Gauthier scored 41 goals \u2014 the most since Corey Perry scored 43 in 2013-14. Beckett Sennecke tied the New York Islanders\u2019 Matthew Schaefer as the rookie goal scorer leader with 23. Leo Carlsson had 29. The three youngsters were their leading scorers and half of the six skaters who had 50 points or more.<\/p>\n
Add in a defense that produced 46 goals, and the Ducks have the capacity to keep pace with the Oilers, who were sixth offensively with 282 goals. Jackson LaCombe had 10 goals and 58 points. The deadline acquisition of John Carlson has given Anaheim another pure puck-moving blueliner. Three of Carlson\u2019s four goals came in his first career hat trick on April 9, and the 36-year-old has 14 points in his 16 games since coming from the Washington Capitals.<\/p>\n
The fun-and-gun ways of the Ducks have also come with a cost on the defensive side, however. While they scored more goals than any other team in franchise history, the Ducks allowed the fourth-most goals with 288. High-event hockey is their calling card, and they\u2019ve been burned by it as much as they\u2019ve torched the opposition. Per Natural Stat Trick, Anaheim generated the fourth-most high-danger chances but also gave up the fifth-most.<\/p>\n
Puck possession has improved under Quenneville. Advanced metrics are in their favor after years of letting teams drive the play. The Ducks outshoot the opposition on average, but they\u2019re still guilty of letting teams get too many grade-A chances in the slot area. The biggest problem may be whether Lukas Dostal can raise his game to the level befitting a star No. 1 goalie.<\/p>\n
In the first year of his five-year contract extension that now comes with a $6.5 million salary cap number, Dostal joined Guy Hebert, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Jonas Hiller, Frederik Andersen and John Gibson in Ducks goalies with 30-win seasons. But though Dostal\u2019s goals-against average (3.10) remained the same as last season, his save percentage has sagged, falling from .903 to .888.<\/p>\n
More notably, Dostal\u2019s goals saved above average, per MoneyPuck, dropped to minus-2.9 from the 14.3 of 2024-25 that made him a rising netminder with high-end No. 1 potential. The 25-year-old has given the Ducks key saves in moments when they\u2019ve rallied for wins during this season\u2019s successful stretches, but he\u2019s also not given them enough stops when they\u2019ve hit rough skids (an 0-8-1 stretch from Dec. 22 to Jan. 10 among them).<\/p>\n
The Ducks now need Dostal to be at his best. They\u2019ll need him to be better than Oilers goalie Connor Ingram, who has emerged as their go-to option. Ingram has been strong of late with three straight victorious starts of one goal allowed in each and a .924 SVP over his last eight appearances. The Oilers have also adopted a more defensive mindset after getting forward Jason Dickinson and defenseman Connor Murphy at the deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever keeps them out of the net the best is going to be successful,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cWe know that we can outscore that team and outrun them. But we can play more patient against them. You know, we got a tall task ahead of us, knowing that the power play\u2019s lethal and they\u2019ve got some special players.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those is Draisaitl. The Oilers\u2019 superstar hasn\u2019t played since March 15 because of a lower-body injury, but he has been skating and has progressed to day-to-day status. Edmonton is staying tight-lipped on his status, but the possibility of him being ready for Monday\u2019s Game 1 as well as the rest of the series is increasing.<\/p>\n
It makes for another obstacle for the Ducks. Zach Hyman also returned from injury in Edmonton\u2019s season finale Thursday against Vancouver. With the ultimate conductor in McDavid, the Oilers have all the pieces for their lethal top-ranked power play back together, a major test for Anaheim\u2019s 27th-ranked penalty kill.<\/p>\n
The Ducks aren\u2019t exactly blowing into these playoffs on a strong tailwind. They\u2019re looking at a third-period rally to clinch third place in the Pacific Division as the stimulus to lock into a playoff mindset.<\/p>\n
\u201dI think we needed some positivity here,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201c\u2026 I think there might have been a little bit of complacency, knowing that it looked like we should have made the playoffs a while ago. And then it dragged on, and then the urgency all of a sudden was right in front of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat little response here at the end helped, but at the same time, there\u2019s another level that we\u2019ve got to get to come when we start.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maybe if the last three weeks had played out differently, the Anaheim Ducks\u2019 return to the Stanley Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,1739,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-555526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim-ducks","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-ducks","10":"tag-anaheimducks","11":"tag-ducks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116427750548894773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555526","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=555526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}