The distance from second place to the bottom of the NHL’s Pacific Division is 43 miles. This is how far Crypto.com Arena, where second place Kings play, comes from the Honda Center, home of Duckswhich share the cellar division with San José.
In the standings, the teams are separated by eight points after the Kings’ 2-1 victory during Friday morning in Anaheim. But despite this result, the gap between the teams on the ice could narrow, which is important in a two-franchise market, said Greg Croninwho is in his second season behind the Ducks bench.
Cronin was an assistant coach for the New York Islanders and the Toronto Maple Leafs, teams that made up one half of two legendary hockey feuds. And these matches were the ones that fans and players alike were looking forward to.
“The rivalry with the (New York) Rangers is pretty intense,” Cronin said of his time on Long Island. “And then Toronto and Montreal, totally different markets, but it’s one of the richest and strongest rivalries in hockey, right?
The Kings’ Erik Portillo (1) makes a save with help from Brandt Clarke (92) during a victory over the Ducks Friday at Honda Center.
(Debora Robinson/NHLI via Getty Images)
“After playing the Kings last year as a new coach on the West Coast, it kind of hit me like it was a rivalry game. It’s fun.
The Southern California rivalry has lost some of that joy and intensity as the two neighbors have grown further apart in the standings, with the Kings finishing third in the division and making the playoffs in each of the last three seasons. while the Ducks, who haven’t had a winning record since 2018, are mired in a six-season playoff drought that has lasted six seasons.
But more than a quarter into this season, the Ducks have started to show signs of life. Before Friday’s loss, the Ducks had points in five of their last six games, winning four.
“Over the last 10 games, we seemed to find an identity as a group,” said Cronin, whose team lost its opener to the Kings 4-1 in the same building five weeks ago. “The last 10 games are more about how we want to play. Whether we forecheck, huddle, or just play as a connected group, we begin to understand this.
Ducks too welcomed back goalie John Gibson in the middle of that stretch and he won four of his first five starts, the only loss coming in overtime. Gibson missed the start of the season after undergoing emergency appendectomy surgery in September.
But Gibson, 31, is the fifth-oldest player on a team in the third season of a rebuilding project that could now bear fruit. No NHL team has more players 21 or younger than the Ducks, who have six: Mason McTavish, Olen Zellweger, Tyson Hinds and Pavel Mintyukov, all 21; Cutter Gauthier, 20 years old; and teenager Leo Carlsson, 19. Four of the six were first-round picks.
The ability of Cronin’s team, the youngest in the division, to take the next step in closing the gap with the Kings and the rest of the league will depend on how quickly these young Ducklings mature. They’re already showing signs of that with Carlsson, who missed his second game Friday with an upper-body injury, sharing the team lead with six goals. McTavish and Gauthier are tied for second in assists with seven each, while Mintyukov leads all healthy skaters in ice time per game.
“Most of the teams that are really reliable in the way they play are led by a lot of guys that are in their 20s, the 25 to 30 age group. We have a complete absence from this group,” said Cronin, who only has four healthy skaters between the ages of 25 and 30. “It’s just a very unusual dynamic.”
The Kings, meanwhile, are looking for consistency. Although Friday’s win was their second in three days and gave them back-to-back wins for the first time in nearly a month, it followed a stretch in which they lost five of eight, allowing seven goals to the worst team in the division one night, then beat the best team in the NHL two nights later.
Highly touted goaltender Erik Portillo made his NHL debut with the Kings on Friday and stopped the first 11 shots he saw, but the 12th went past him, Ryan Strome giving the Ducks a 1- 0 at 2:48 of the second period.
But Portillo, whose parents arrived from Sweden on Thanksgiving Day, wasn’t beaten again, making 28 saves – the biggest being a pad save on Troy Terry before a wide-open net 17 seconds into the game. end – despite having left the ice for two minutes. to repair a skate blade midway through the final period. This allowed the Kings to come back on the goals of their two Alex, Turcotte and Laferrière.
Turcotte finished first, on a wrist shot from just inside the left faceoff circle to tie the game midway through the second period. Laferrière, who assisted on that goal, had one of his 78 seconds of play in the final period, corralling the rebound of a Phillip Danault shot to allow the Kings to escape with the victory.
“These teams have fought hard over the years and they’re always close games,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said of the rivalry with the Ducks. “They are emotional matches, they are close.
“I think it was the best game they played this year. They were clearly ready to welcome us. So it probably brings out the best in both teams.
