ANAHEIM — The never-a-dull-moment Ducks are taking their show on the road for a Western Canadian swing that will see them oppose the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday, the Calgary Flames on Thursday and the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
On Sunday, their eighth tying goal in the final two minutes of a match gave them two more than any other team has had through 70 games in NHL history, per public relations guru Alex Gilchrist.
They have, of course, needed to be in a position to score those dramatic markers, and also for their league-leading number of third-period comebacks and rallies of any kind. Their opponents have scored first in 44 of their 70 contests, and they’ve also been prone to retroceding leads. Both those things happened against the Buffalo Sabres, who struck first, then trailed 4-2 before putting the Ducks down a goal with a third-period torrent. The Ducks circled the wagons to win 6-5 in a bonus frame.
“We still need to have better starts, I didn’t feel like we were really ready from the start again,” said winger Troy Terry, who scored two goals including the game-winner. “That’s the next step for us, is good starts and holding onto the leads. But we have a way to make it exciting, it seems, and I just love how this team can come back no matter what the situation.”
Terry said the longer-tenured Ducks –– he has been with the team longer than any other current player –– were “dying” to play in meaningful games down the stretch and into the playoffs, and “relishing” the stakes of a tight divisional race that they currently led.
While both Terry’s goals came at even strength, the late equalizer and the first two tallies in the victory came off the power play. Chris Kreider scored one of those goals and assisted on the other. Kreider, in his first year with the Ducks, said the message was simple when the Ducks fell behind in the closing stanza.
“We’re never out of it, stay with it, just keep pushing,” Kreider summarized.
While the Ducks are very much in both individual games and the divisional race, Vancouver and Calgary are not. The Canucks, who have been without Thatcher Demko for much of the year due to injury and have seen key departures over time — Bo Horvat, J.T. Miller and, most prominently, Quinn Hughes — are leading the Gavin McKenna sweepstakes by a wide margin, all but mathematically assured of the highest odds in the lottery.
The Flames are the next worst team in the Pacific, having experienced a drain of their own beginning with Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau, but continuing with Noah Hanifin, Jacob Markström, Christopher Tanev and Elias Lindholm. This year alone, they added Rasmus Andersson, Nazem Kadri and MacKenzie Weegar to that list.
One addition they made was former Ducks center Ryan Strome, who has six points in nine games since joining the Flames, including the overtime winner in an upset over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday. He had just nine points in 33 games as a Duck in 2025-26.
The Oilers, the two-time defending conference champs, were picked by many to occupy the perch that the Ducks currently hold. But their season has been Sisyphean.
They’ve won three games in a row just once and followed it up with a season-long four-game slide. They made a foreseeably foolish trade to address their goaltending issues, swapping the unsteady Stuart Skinner for the even more wobbly Tristan Jarry, and at a high cost.
Now they’ve lost Leon Draisaitl for the regular season. While Connor McDavid has continued to deliver, his NHL scoring lead was overtaken by Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov in a head-to-head meeting on Saturday in which Kucherov poured in four points.