The distance between second place and the bottom of the Pacific Division of the NHL is 43 miles. It's how far Crypto.com Arena, where second place Kiss playing, comes from the Honda Center, at the house of DucksWho shares the division cellar with San José.
In the ranking, the teams are at eight intervals after The 2-1 victory of the Kings In the morning of Friday in Anaheim. But despite this result, the gap between the ice teams can close and it is important in a two -franchise market Greg CroninWho is in his second season behind the Ducks bench.
Cronin was deputy coach of the New York and Toronto Maple Leafs, teams that represented half of two hockey quarrels. And these matches were those who were impatiently with those whom fans and players were looking forward to.
“The rivalry (New York) Ranger is quite intense,” said Cronin about his time at Long Island. “And then Toronto and Montreal, completely different markets, but it is one of the richest and strongest rivalries in hockey, right?
Erik Portillo des Kings (1) made a stop with the help of Brandt Clarke (92) during a victory against the Ducks on Friday at the Honda Center.
(Debora Robinson / NHLI via Getty Images)
“Having played the Kings last year as a new coach on the West Coast, it somehow struck me as yes, it's a rivalry game. They are fun.”
The rivalry of the south of California has lost part of this joy and this intensity while the two neighbors separated in the classification, the Kings finishing third in the division and doing the after-season in each of the last three seasons while the Ducks, who have not had a winning record since 2018, are embarrassed in a drought of six seasons of six-Season franchise.
But more than a quarter of the way this season, the Ducks began to show signs of life. Before Friday's defeat, the Ducks had won points in the past five of their last six games, winning four.
“The last 10 games, we seemed to find an identification as a group,” said Cronin, whose team lost their first match against the Kings 4-1 in the same building five weeks ago. “The last 10 games are more as we want to play. Whether we are stimulated or group together or simply play as a connected group, we start to understand this.”
Ducks too Welcome goalkeeper John Gibson In the middle of this sequence and he won four of his first five departures, the only defeat in overtime. Gibson missed the start of the season after undergoing emergency appendectomy surgery in September.
But Gibson, 31, is the fifth oldest player of a team of the third season of a reconstruction project that could now bear fruit. No team in the NHL is no longer wearing players aged 21 or less than the Ducks, who have six in Mason Mctavish, Olen Zellweger, Tyson Hinds and Pavel Mintyukov, who are every 21 years; Gauthier 20 -year -old cutter; And the teenager Leo Carlsson, 19. Four of the six were choice for recourse in the first round.
The question of whether the Cronin team, the youngest in the division, can take the next step to fill the gap with the Kings and the rest of the league will depend on the speed with which these young canetons will mature. They are already showing signs of this with Carlsson, who missed his second match on Friday with an upper body injury, sharing the team's head with goals with six. MCTAVISH and GAUTHIER are tied in the second row of the assists with seven each while Mintyukov leads all healthy skaters in time of ice per game.
“Most of the teams that are really reliable in the way they play, they are motivated by many guys who are at the end of the twenty, the group of 25 to 30 years. We have a complete absence of this group,” said Cronin, who has only four healthy skaters between 25 and 30 years. “It is only a very unusual dynamic.”
Kings, on the other hand, seek consistency. Although Friday's victory was their second in three days and gave them consecutive victories for the first time in almost a month, he followed a section in which they lost five of the eight, abandoning seven goals to the worst night team, then defeating the best NHL team two nights later.
The very praised goalkeeper Erik Portillo made his NHL debut for the Kings on Friday and stopped the first 11 shots he saw, but the 12th exceeded him, Ryan Strome giving the Ducks an advance of 1-0 2:48 in the second period.
But Portillo, whose parents arrived from Sweden on Thanksgiving Day, would not be beaten again, making 28 stops – the most important to save on Troy Terry before a net widely open with 17 seconds to play – despite the ice leash for two minutes to repair a skate blade halfway through the last period. This allowed the Kings to return to the goals of their two Alexes, Turcotte and Laferriere.
Turcotte came first, on a Wryter just inside the left confrontation circle until the match halfway through the second period. Laferriere, who had the assistance on this goal, obtained one of her 78 seconds in the last period, hitting the rebound in a Phillip Danault shot to allow kings to escape with victory.
“These teams have fought over the years and they are still tight matches,” said Kings coach Jim Hiller about the rivalry with the Ducks. “These are emotional games, they are tight.
“I thought it was the best match they played this year. They were clearly ready for us. So that probably brings out the best of the two teams.”
