The director general of the plan of years, Pat Verbeek, has developed for his young Ducks They had played significant matches during the last month of this season. And they played significant games this month.
Only the games have not been so significant for the Ducks.
However, they have noted a lot for the teams that the Ducks have played. THE KissFor example, got closer to a big step to get the advantage of ice ice for the first round of the playoffs in 6-1 Eruption Ducks, which gave them an advantage of four points on the EDMONTON Oilers in the classification of the Pacific division with four games to play.
The margin of victory is a fairly good indicator of the distance between the NHL teams in southern California. The Kings go to the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season while the Ducks will miss the playoffs for a consecutive seventh time, the third longer drought in the NHL. Thus, while the buildings where the teams play are only 34 miles from the other, on the ice, there is an ocean separating the kings from the ducks.
This may not have been the case for a long time, however, because this season has been progress for the Ducks. They are 21 points before their place at this stage a year ago and have won 35 games for the first time since 2019.
And with the last six games of the team against teams who have won places in playoffs or who fight for them, the Ducks have had the chance to live an atmosphere of the eliminatory type.
“These are the games that we have to make it comfortable to play. And you can measure yourself ”, Ducks coach Greg Cronin said Thursday. “Your level of competition. Your decisions with the washer. All these things that are part of an eliminatory environment.
“We are trying to build on an identity. Tonight, we had 11 children born in 2000 and less and they are in these games. It is a different game, it is a different rhythm, it is a different intensity. It is therefore essential that they go through this type of game. It will help in the long term.”
The long term was the basis of the slow and deliberate reconstruction project of the Ducks, the one that started seven years ago. It is a plan built around the writing and development of local players and it can finally bear fruit.
Mason MCTAVISH, LEO Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier were all taken in the first round of the NHL draft and this season, each player has at least 20 goals and 23 assists. None are over 22 years old. Olen Zellweger, a second round choice in 2021, and Pavel Mintyukov, the 10th choice in total in 2022, became solid defenders at 21 years old. And Lukas Dostal, ending his fourth season, became a solid goalkeeper at 24.
This brings us to the next stage of the Verbeek plan: keep this core of young Canetons together while bringing together veterans to ensure leadership and stability. It will take work this summer to do it.
Dostal and MCTAVISH are eligible for becoming limited free agents, as is the 23 -year -old winger, Sam Colangelo, and the 24 -year -old defender Drew Helleson while Gauthier, Carlsson, Mintyukov, Zellweger and the Trevor Zegras center, 23, are another year on their contracts. It would now seem that the time to conclude agreements with many if not all of them since Verbeek has a ton of available ceiling space and will soon have even more money to spend, the ceiling jumping $ 7.5 million for next season and an additional $ 8.5 million in 2026-27.
However, not everyone is patient in the ducks plan.
“It's a fairly distant corner if it's the corner that we are trying to shoot,” said defender Jacob Trouba, a 12 -year -old veteran acquired from the New York Rangers in December. “There is much more to have, much more to seek.”
However, if the Ducks believe they are building towards something special, kings are already there. Thursday's victory, on two goals from Kevin Fiala and the scores of Quinton Byfield, Anze Kopitar, Alex Laferriere and Jordan Spence, was their 14th in 18 games. They scored on average more than 3½ goals per game during this sequence while goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper experienced 15 games without abandoning more than two scores, a shy match of the modern NHL record.
All this momentum arrives at a good time with their opening match of the playoffs – which will almost certainly be a revenge match with the Oilers – within 10 days. Edmonton eliminated the kings in the first round in each of the last three seizures, but all these series have opened in Canada. This spring, the Kings will probably open at home, where they have the best NHL record.
“Success is the most important thing. That's all that matters,” said Fiala, who has played in Kings qualifying series in the past two seasons. “We just have to stay there, continue what we do, believe in the system, believe in us, believe in what we do and continue.”
In other words, believe in terms of. The Ducks also try to do so.
