O Kings It is Ducks going in opposite directions when they ice skated on Saturday at the Crypto.com Arena.
The Kings are headed to the playoffs for the third consecutive season, the team’s longest streak of postseason appearances in a decade. The Ducks, meanwhile, will take to the golf course again after Thursday’s regular-season finale, having missed the postseason for the sixth straight year, the longest drought in franchise history.
Saturday’s 3-1 victory it was the Kings’ fifth win in six games. For the Ducks, it was their 50th loss of the season, the first in the franchise’s 30-year history.
But the difference between the two is narrower and more fickle than it might seem.
See more information: Kings defeat Ducks and extend home winning streak to eight games
“It’s a difficult game,” he said Kings President Luc Robitaille. “You have to have a plan, you have to stick to it, you have to have a little luck with injuries too.”
When that luck runs out, well, then you have the Ducks.
“You can look at any team that won and they had a little bit of luck,” Ducks General Manager Pat Verbeek he said. “They drank a little, now they are fine. You can never take that away. But there’s always some kind of thing.”
Neither Robitaille nor Verbeek attribute their teams’ successes and failures solely to fortune. But they’re not ruling out the impact either.
“If you said why you are lucky, it is more than [Anze] Kopitar It is [Drew] Valente they are still very important players on our team,” Robitaille said of the team captains and five-time All-Stars, both in their 30s. “In other teams this didn’t happen.
“We feel lucky that these guys are still important players.”
For Verbeek and the Ducks, the opposite has been true. Forwards Trevor Zegras, Leo Carlsson and Alex Killorn and goaltender John Gibson have missed substantial time due to injuries this season, which is a big reason why the Ducks are better than just two other teams in goals scored, goals allowed and goal difference.
“It’s not ideal when your best players aren’t in the lineup — and they’re not in the lineup together, which was the intended goal,” said Verbeek, who took over as the Ducks’ general manager 26 months ago. “But hey, every team deals with it. It’s a little more pronounced now because we haven’t yet reached the full depth in our lineup that I’m looking for when we’re healthy.”
Of course, there’s more to it than that, because the Kings also lost key players – Viktor Arvidsson, Carl Grundstrom and Mikey Anderson – to injuries. But the Kings overcame that with stellar seasons from Kopitar (26 goals, 70 points) and Doughty (15 goals, 50 points) along with the combined 86 goals and 114 assists they got. Trevor Moore, Adriano Kempe It is Kevin Fiala. Veteran goalkeeper Cam Talbotwho is probably having his best season in eight years, also made an important contribution.
However, the biggest turning point in the Kings’ season came in early February when the team fired coach Todd McLellan and promoted longtime assistant Jim Hiller. The Kings have won 20 of 32 games since the move and guaranteed a place in the playoffs by defeating Calgary on Thursday.
“The system is the same, but I’m not sure it’s the same message,” Robitaille said. “We are all grateful for what Todd did. He implemented a system that our guys believe in. Unfortunately, it seemed like we just needed a different voice and Jim came along and his communication is different.”
Hiller, an assistant for 10 years with four NHL teams, has a reputation for being more of a player coach than McLellan, according to many on the team. However, Hiller said the biggest factor in the team’s success was the timing of its promotion. The Kings lost 14 of 17 games before the All-Star break, which led to McLellan’s firing, and then won five of their first six when the season resumed. They are a league-best 13-2-1 at home since the All-Star break.
“When you’re not winning, it’s heavy,” Hiller said. “So you try to lighten up and bring in some fresh energy, see if that helps. I think that coming out of the break the players were refreshed and ready to play again.”
It’s going so well that Robitaille and general manager Rob Blake took a little heat for not moving at the March trade deadline, opting to reinforce the team with the return of Arvidsson and Anderson.
“You don’t want to make a trade just to make a trade,” Robitaille said. “If you’re going to make a trade, you have to say, ‘Is this guy better than ours?’
“Our guys are coming back, we like the way they play. We believe in the way our players play. And when Arvidsson came back, he showed us we were right. The same goes for Mikey Anderson.”
The rebuilding Ducks, on the other hand, were active at the deadline, acquiring three draft picks and two utility players, forward Ben Meyers and center Jan Mysak, while staying at the core of their roster. Nothing has changed since the deadline – the team is 3-13-2 in their last 18 games.
Now come the playoffs – for the Kings, at least. If the team maintains third place in the Pacific Division — it leads Las Vegas by three points with two games remaining, both at home — it will likely begin the postseason by traveling to Edmonton to face the Oilers for the third time in as many seasons.
“It doesn’t matter who we play. It’s going to be difficult,” said Robitaille. “Every game is close.”
In the last two years, the team didn’t make it past the first round, so getting players back was the bare minimum this season. Getting past the first round is the expectation now, something the Kings haven’t done since winning their second Stanley Cup title in 2014.
However, the experience that Anderson, Moore and other Kings players have gained over the past two playoff seasons has Robitaille thinking about the Kings’ first Stanley Cup championship team in 2012.
“In the previous two years, we had [eliminated] in the first round,” he said. “And we were learning. We found a way to win all those games 2-1, 3-2 in the playoffs. That’s how we’re playing now.
“You get into a playoff series and if you have one or two breaks, it becomes very difficult for the other team to beat you. We play this style all year round. We’re more prepared to play that playoff style.”
See more information: Akil Thomas scores his first NHL goal as Kings beat Sharks
For the Ducks, it’s back to the drawing board. How long it will take to finish the film, Verbeek couldn’t say.
“That’s a very difficult question to answer,” said Verbeek, who was a winner throughout his 38-year career as a player, scout and executive, lifting the Stanley Cup twice. “The reason it’s hard to answer is because at the end of the day, we have a lot of young players and you don’t know how quickly they will make the adjustments to become impact players.”
“But I’m also being realistic,” he added. “I believe we will have our time. It’s not like that yet, but I hope that next year our team will fight for a place in the playoffs. I’m not saying we’re going to make it. But I’m saying we should be involved.”
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
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