Are the Anaheim Ducks almost good enough? Not to contend, but to be in most games they play. Their last ten games, they’re 6-3-1, which is a .650 points pace. In other words, they get two-thirds of the points they contend for. Do this all year, and you’d have over one hundred standings points, far and away enough to make the playoffs.
After a 1-0 loss Wednesday and lots of time to think about it, both before and after, this being their only game in the work week, the LA Kings faced off against the Seattle Kraken, who had an equal amount of time to think about a 3-0 win against the Nashville Predators.
Come off the first half of a back-to-back, switch out your goalie. That’s the plan almost universally followed in this era when stats rule and the numbers say that goaltending drops off significantly in the second game. And that was the plan followed by the Detroit Red Wings…
John Gibson, long-suffering goaltender for the somewhat hapless Anaheim Ducks, was rumored to be on the trading block last spring. It wasn’t lack of performance by the player or interest by the team that got him there, but rather desire in a positive sense. His desire was to win, finally…
The experiment of the weekend: Trevor versus Connor, not head-to-head, but how would each perform in similar circumstances? Yesterday afternoon, it was Bedard’s chance to impress, and he had a game with a couple of late flashes but that was otherwise routine.
One was born in 2001, one in 2005. One is Canadian, one is American. One was drafted first overall, a spot seemingly appointed for him from when he was a pre-teen. The other came onto the radar a little bit later, and ended up going to his NHL team in round one, but not first overall — ninth. Now both are in the NHL…
The LA Kings came into the second game in a back-to-back trying to put a tempest in a teapot behind them.
Sometimes, the chemistry of a forward line just clicks, on no particular effort of coaching. Such is the case with the Kings’ current third line. The trio gave the Kings two goals in a 3-2 win over the San Jose Sharks Thursday evening in Los Angeles. The line carried the play.
The fans were buzzing. The action was immediate. The teams traded leads as the game went on. You think I’m talking about Kings versus Ducks, the game that took place on Sunday at 5pm in Anaheim? Not a chance. I’m hyping the Mets-Dodgers game that more than a few in Honda Center were keeping track of on their phones. At the very least, that other game, 25 miles or so up the road, featured offense. The one in Anaheim, not so much.
What’s new? Ask that of most people, and you’ll get a “not much” in response. Ask it in the Anaheim Ducks’ orbit, and you’ll get a little more, from player news to news off the ice.
So what is the EIHL anyway? It’s tempting to call it the English Ice Hockey League, except that they have a more grandiose name for themselves, with the first “E” standing for “Elite.”
The day I left Winnipeg after being on the spot for the introduction of Jets 2.0, in 2009, every section of the local paper had a story on the team. Every one, not just sports. On Saturday, April 20th, when I opened the British papers expecting to find something about the EIHL (Elite Ice Hockey League) Playoff weekend, I found exactly nothing.
The LA Kings are hurting, which is to say, they have some key players on IR. Primary amongst those were day-to-day Adrian Kempe and Mikey Anderson on Thursday night, with Ottawa having made their way up the freeway from a game in Anaheim the night before.
The Ducks’ and Kings’ arenas are maybe 30 miles apart, though nobody speaks of miles here. Rather, it’s time. On the weekends, it’s possible for me to get from downtown LA, where I reported on the LA-New Jersey game, to Anaheim, with a stop at home to walk the dog, all in time for the twin Canadian-American national anthems, sung just past 5pm at Honda Center.
Beware the backhand. In another day, one’s father would not allow the purchase of a curved stick because it was a sure way to weaken the backhand. If my dad had talked to Cam Talbot fifteen seconds into the game against New Jersey in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon, he would have had all the proof he needed for his theory.
Bye bye, Frank. What a shame that your year of excellence playing in Anaheim has to result in a move elsewhere, but that’s what it looks like is going to happen. So goes the mourning song of Anaheim Ducks fans, who have been lucky to observe Frank Vatrano’s scoring highlights in this season of loss.
Anaheim, CA – Nashville isn’t quite there, yet. Where? In the premier group of teams who will make the playoffs with reasonable expectations of a run. They did hold a wildcard spot as of Sunday evening and their game with the Ducks in SoCal, by two points over both St. Louis and Minnesota.
Two nights prior to this one, more than two dozen scouts showed up to watch the LA Kings take on, and lose to, the Nashville Predators. Now here it was, Saturday, and everybody seemed to have better things to do. Just three pro scouts were in the usual front-row seats in the Kings’ arena’s press box.
Welcome, new guy. Do you need to know how to get from parking spot to coach’s office? No? Wait. Haven’t I met you somewhere before? Hey—you were with the Kings, right? As a player back in the 1990s? Played 40 games and scored six goals on the way to a 63-game, eight-goal career?
Honoring the past while still in the present—that’s what the Kings did Wednesday night as present-day captain, Anze Kopitar, was feted in a brief ceremony before the team’s game versus Buffalo. He returned the favor by going straight out and scoring the game’s first goal, his 15th of the year and 408th career goal.
Sunday, the Ducks managed to perpetuate the frustration of the New York Rangers, carried over from a 2-1 loss to the LA Kings and, before that, a 5-1 dumping by the Vegas team. This happened on Sunday late afternoon into the evening while most of the country, and probably Canada, was watching the NFL. How bad was it for the Rangers?
Something’s gotta change. That is evident when it comes to the LA Kings, though what that something is, is up for question. Coming into Saturday’s game versus the New York Rangers, the team had lost nine of ten games. More precisely, going back to late December, they won three of four, then lost eight in a row, won one, and then lost two more.
What team wouldn’t be better with Patrick Kane playing on it at his best? The question when he signed on with the Detroit Red Wings after the season was underway was whether he would be the old Kane, the one who is pacing at more than a point-a-game clip over a career that has seen him suit up almost 1200 times.
Are the Ducks finally getting to where they can hang with better teams? Their recent games, all losses, have been close, so that was the hope. It was also the early appearance of things Friday night with the Jets in town. The story was what it has been: John Gibson held Anaheim in early, and the Ducks backed up his play with some big hits.
The Anaheim Ducks are close to intact once more, by which is meant that all of Zegras, McTavish, and Drysdale are in the lineup, off of IR visits lasting anywhere from most of a season (Jamie Drysdale), to a few weeks (Trevor Zegras), and a few games (Mason McTavish). Saturday evening, this newly complete lineup battled the Seattle Kraken.
The Colorado Avalanche went west on the weekend, hoping for four points and ending up with one. What happened, and what does the disparity in style of play they experienced say about what will work in the playoffs, when they arrive?
It’s going to be a long while, maybe a couple of years, before people will attend a Washington Capitals game with the words, “maybe tonight” on their tongues. That phrase, of course, will refer to the quest of the “Great Eight,” Alexander Ovechkin, to become the greatest goal scorer of all time in the NHL.
People from all over North America turned up in Southern California last week chasing their beloved Montreal Canadiens, hoping to see the team in person. After the first of these games, Montreal goalie Sam Montembeault told IH, “It’s crazy. Everywhere we go we’ve got Montreal fans. Here like two hours, two hours twenty before the game, the bus was entering the parking, and there were some Canadiens Habs jerseys in the parking lot.”
The Anaheim Ducks have played at mid-day on Black Friday for years. It used to be that Chicago was the opponent, and the lore was, “They’re on their circus trip,” by which it was meant that the Blackhawks were vacating their arena so that the circus could take up residence. I’m not sure what’s happened to that, but this year, the Ducks were hosting their cross-town rivals, the LA Kings.
A week or so ago, the Anaheim Ducks were on a roll, coming off a successful road trip. Now they’re spending American Thanksgiving week at home, and things aren’t so super. They’d lost two games in a row coming into Sunday, when the Blues were in town for a 5pm start. By the end of the game, make that three losses in a row as they went down, 3-1. Why did this happen?
