ANAHEIM, Calif. — The first of four Freeway Faceoff collisions had what’s become familiar when the two rival teams meet at Honda Center, with “Go Kings Go” breaking out among the sizable Los Angeles Kings contingent and forcing the Anaheim Ducks faithful to counter in response with “Let’s Go Ducks.”
Even before puck drop, there was Corey Perry in a No. 10 jersey lingering in the pregame warmup skate until all his teammates left the ice. As he has done before every game he plays, Perry darted in from the outer hashmarks of the left circle, took a puck and then fired it into an empty net. Folks in Anaheim were accustomed to seeing that over 14 seasons, but as if the rink were spun around, it is so different now with Perry going through his customary routine in Kings colors at the opposite end instead of a Ducks sweater.
Perry playing against the Ducks isn’t new, as he has gone through six teams since then-Anaheim general manager Bob Murray bought him out in 2019. The first time the former Ducks star would do so as a member of the rival Kings was a juicy storyline the moment he signed with Los Angeles on July 1. But it was a subplot in an intrigue-laden Black Friday matinee.
The announced sellout crowd of 17,174 witnessed one team still learning how to drive and maneuver its shiny speedboat and the other doing all it could to keep a no-frills, tried-and-true working vessel running. The Ducks and Kings aren’t quite two ships passing each other in the night, but it feels as if the former is on to the start of something and the latter is valiantly trying to keep its something from reaching its end.
As a jam-packed Pacific Division continues to play itself out, the Ducks emerged with a 5-4 shootout victory and the extra point in the way they know how — scoring goals and doing it with a flair for the dramatic. It has been a flawed but fun run to first place. The Ducks still once again stared at looming defeat in the third period and shrugged.
Alex Turcotte and Joel Edmundson scored 3:30 apart for a 4-2 L.A. lead, and a Kings club built on experience to support stout defensive play and strong goaltending figured to bring a win back north to El Segundo. Pavel Mintyukov and Leo Carlsson had other ideas. Mintyukov cut the deficit to a goal midway through the third, and then Carlsson converted a Jackson LaCombe pass from behind the Kings’ net with a sixth Anaheim attacker on the ice and just 91 seconds left in regulation.
Hug your goalie 🤗#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/XTpNgj0alA
— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) November 29, 2025
The go-go Ducks, who often take trading scoring chances with their opponents too literally, can be chaotic, but what was once a mess throughout their years of rebuilding is now being turned into currency. Once Troy Terry and Mason McTavish provided the difference in the shootout, Anaheim got its fifth victory when pulling off a multi-goal comeback in the third.
“I don’t know if that’s just the side effect of the way that we want to play, but a lot of the games are just pretty chaotic,” said Chris Kreider, whose power-play goal was his 11th goal in a developing return-to-form season. “Up-tempo. Pucks are bouncing, and if we do some of the right things, I think we know that we’re going to at least get some looks and capitalize on a couple.
“It’s definitely a confident feeling. It’s not something you can rely on all the time. You want to get a lead, hold a lead, so there’s definitely some stuff we can improve on.”
Chris Kreider makes things happen in front of the net!#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/0rAgfRAXNC
— Victory+ (@victoryplustv) November 28, 2025
The Kings must quickly move past a stinging defeat when they host the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday. But the loss was hardly damaging. They pocketed another point and had multiple opportunities to grab a second, even with a blown lead. Anaheim has grabbed headlines with its surprising 15-8-1 record and the highlights that Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and Beckett Sennecke regularly generate, but Los Angeles is right there, just two points behind in second place, continually scratching out points without any headliners.
At 11-6-7, the Kings are the embodiment of a wild 2025-26 where overtime games are part of the nightly menu across the league. Loser points are collected by nearly everyone, and the Kings have their share. But they still count, and you need all you can get to get to the postseason for a fifth straight year. For the first half of Friday’s game and parts after the Ducks started to mount comebacks, L.A. was playing its frustrating checking style and succeeding.
“We wanted to play our game, and I thought we played our game,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “We wanted to make sure that we weren’t giving up a lot of odd-mans, that sort of thing, letting them race through the neutral zone. I thought we did a pretty good job of that.
“I liked our game overall. Their goalie made a few big saves there at the end, and we made a couple mistakes that we’d like back, and they finished.”
What Hiller touched on was the unexpected variable that shockingly made the difference. Ville Husso found out Thursday morning that he would be starting in goal for Anaheim. Lukáš Dostál, the Ducks’ star netminder, is dealing with an upper-body injury. Petr Mrázek is their usual backup. But after Mrázek was beaten four times on 27 shots by Vancouver in a 5-4 loss Wednesday, Ducks coach Joel Quenneville turned to Husso instead for a rivalry game where first place was up for grabs.
How surprising is Husso getting the call? The 30-year-old was recalled Wednesday only once the Ducks saw that Dostál would need recovery time on the sideline. Husso was re-signed by Anaheim as a capable No. 3 goalie, one who could work regularly in the American Hockey League and bring NHL experience if he is needed.
“When I came to the rink yesterday and got the call, I was excited,” Husso told The Athletic. “Just to play and knowing two top teams playing each other, it’s fun. A fun atmosphere. Rink was loud today and a lot of fun.
“Just got to enjoy those moments. I wasn’t nervous or anything. Just enjoyable.”
The Kings put four pucks past the Helsinki native in the 139th start of his career. Husso said two of L.A.’s goals “squeezed by” him and he would have liked another crack at them. But he was at his best once Carlsson tied the score at 4-4 late.
Adrian Kempe had a great look with 35 seconds left in regulation, but Husso robbed the Kings’ sniper with a lunging stop on his one-timer and got Anaheim to overtime. Once there, he foiled Kevin Fiala after the winger beat him clean in the second period.
“He played fantastic,” Kreider said of Husso, who had 23 saves. “We’ve had great goaltending all season. Got to continue to try to help out our goaltenders because we ask a lot from them every single night.”
Before the game, Hiller acknowledged the Ducks’ rise as his club tries to remain an obstacle to local superiority.
“It’s always just two points,” Hiller said. “But I do understand the rivalry and the fact Anaheim has been playing much better than they have in recent years. Our challenge is to make sure that we’re still playing our game and making it hard on them to push through. They’re trying to push through. We have to use and rely on our veteran leadership and style of play to hold them down.”
After 65 minutes (and more) of thrills, Black Friday in Anaheim whetted the appetite for when the Kings and Ducks meet again, Dec. 27 at Crypto.com Arena and then on consecutive nights in a mid-January home-and-home. The teams met for the 168th time in the regular season, but have still had only the seven-game series that the Kings won in 2014 on their way to a second Stanley Cup in the postseason.
Who knows what this matchup leads to, but it’s good when both are relevant and in the mix. Dueling chants popped up across the arena at different times. The in-game DJ got the home crowd going with “Beat L.A.” One team is geared to win now and set on finally breaking its first-round hex, and the other, with a promising future, determined to end its seven-year playoff drought and open a contention window.
It was the kind of festive atmosphere you can only hope plays out in the postseason.
“Last year is the only time I really experienced it, being on the other side, and obviously we weren’t necessarily in a playoff spot, but we were coming,” said Kings defenseman Brian Dumoulin, who spent several months with the Ducks last season before he was traded to New Jersey. “I could see the passion of both fan bases and what it meant to them. Like it didn’t matter how your season was going, but if you beat the Kings, it was a good season for them at that point.
“It’s good to be on this side of it and it’s fun to play in.”