Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli opened their checkbook for a glitzy new coaching staff this offseason, but thus far all they\u2019ve accomplished is proving that money can\u2019t buy happiness.<\/p>\n
Or wins.<\/p>\n
When the Ducks host the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night, they\u2019ll seek to avert a double-digit losing streak. Coach Joel Quenneville\u2019s nine-game winless stretch is already longer than anything the Ducks put together under his predecessor Greg Cronin, whose longest slump last season was five games. Cronin\u2019s crew dropped eight straight during his first year, one defined by injuries, budget-skimping and not-ready-for-prime-time talent.<\/p>\n
These Ducks, who also made significant roster investments, are now running neck-and-neck with the abject futility of even the Dallas Eakins era. They\u2019ve won just two of their past 15 games, approaching the 1-in-15 tailspin with 13 losses in succession that not-so-mercifully concluded four wayward campaigns under Eakins.<\/p>\n
Ducks fans enduring defeat after defeat could at least point to the two franchises with longer playoff droughts, the Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres. But former Kings bench boss Todd McLellan has the Wings atop the Atlantic Division, where the Sabres ascended to the East\u2019s first wild-card spot. That\u2019s on the strength of 13 wins in 14 matches, including Buffalo\u2019s 5-3 victory that sent the Ducks home winless from their most recent road trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Ducks have nearly posted the inverse number, 13 losses in 15 opportunities. Per MoneyPuck, their 22.3% playoff odds are less than half those of Buffalo (56%) and under one third of Detroit\u2019s (75.9%). Should those figures hold, the Ducks would own the NHL\u2019s longest playoff drought.<\/p>\n Their eastern swing wasn\u2019t just an 0-4-0 debacle that finished without Troy Terry (upper-body injury, doubtful for Monday) and Jacob Trouba (personal reasons, likely for Monday). It also saw them shown up in Philadelphia again, this time by one-time leading scorer Trevor Zegras<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of his two goal celebrations was clearly aimed at the Ducks, who dealt him for a modest return over the summer, as he quickly answered a trade call and hung up using his thumb and pinky. After the game, he said the performance felt \u201c(expletive) amazing\u201d to Flyers broadcaster Scott Hartnell.<\/p>\n Overall, the Ducks surrendered three or more unanswered goals in each of their four losses, which gave them eight regulation defeats among their nine in a row.<\/p>\n They ceded six consecutive goals to the Stars in their last meeting, an 8-3 stampede by Dallas at the Honda Center on Dec. 19<\/a>. Back on Nov. 6, the Ducks surmounted a two-goal deficit and then held three separate two-goal leads en route to a 7-5 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n That was one of five instances in which the Ducks put up a touchdown \u2013 they gave up five or more goals in three of those wins \u2013 and eight in which they\u2019ve scored five or more goals in a game this season. Much as their comeback magic has disappeared, their last such showing was more than a month ago, when they walloped Chicago, 7-1, on Dec. 7<\/a>. The first four seven-goal displays all came in the first month of 2025-26.<\/p>\n Of late, they\u2019ve lit up the wrong side of the scoreboard, surrendering 22 goals on their four-game journey and five or more in seven of their past eight tilts.<\/p>\n The Stars have also struggled, losing seven of eight games heading into their back-to-back set against the Kings and Ducks, though they retained the NHL\u2019s second-highest points percentage and total behind Colorado.<\/p>\n STARS AT DUCKS<\/p>\n When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n Where: Honda Center<\/p>\n TV: TNT, truTV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli opened their checkbook for a glitzy new coaching staff this offseason, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,1706,404,127],"class_list":["post-131339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}