{"id":297159,"date":"2026-05-02T23:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/297159\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T23:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:16:09","slug":"anaheim-ducks-not-worried-about-lack-of-playoff-experience-vs-vegas-golden-knights-golden-knights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/297159\/","title":{"rendered":"Anaheim Ducks not worried about lack of playoff experience vs Vegas Golden Knights | Golden Knights"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 The Golden <\/a>Knights<\/a>\u2019 second-round opponent in the Ducks could be considered a plucky, young team.<\/p>\n

After all, the Ducks made the playoffs for the first time in eight years and are riding high after winning their first playoff series in nine years.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re not merely happy just to be here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the room, belief\u2019s in here,\u201d Ducks right winger Troy Terry said Saturday. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s not as much pressure from media and outside sources and all that. We saw all the picks from the NHL voters and writers and stuff. But internally we have high expectations for ourselves, and we\u2019re playing another team that within this room we know they\u2019re a good team and we have lot of respect for but we swept them this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t necessarily mean anything going into the playoffs, but we know that we can play with them and beat them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Knights and Ducks met three times in the regular season, and each time the Ducks won 4-3, including twice in overtime.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re plenty dangerous against the playoff-experienced Knights after knocking off the Oilers in six games in the opening around.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t accomplish any goal yet obviously,\u201d Ducks defenseman Jackson LaCombe said, \u201cbut we don\u2019t really have any I\u2019d say high expectation and kind of play as underdogs through the whole playoffs here.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re just trying to play our game and keep doing our thing and just keep rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaCombe has stepped forward in the postseason with eight assists and a goal in the Edmonton series. He\u2019s in his third full NHL season while top goal scorer Cutter Gauthier is in his second full season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like crazy to me that people are just now figuring out about him sometimes, and I realize that we haven\u2019t been on this stage and that\u2019s when guys get seen,\u201d Terry said of LaCombe. \u201cIt\u2019s been almost wild to me that people haven\u2019t realized how good this kid is. Every night we play, he controls the game with his legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the first guy on the attack for us. He\u2019s playing (Oilers star Connor) McDavid. Literally he doesn\u2019t have a weakness in his game, and he\u2019s so calm and just a good person that we\u2019re just excited for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaCombe downplayed the importance of the regular-season results against the Pacific Division champion Knights, who he noted, \u201cNew coach in there too, so they\u2019re going to play hard.\u201d He was alluding to John Tortorella, who took over the Knights on March <\/a>30<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joel Quenneville is the Ducks\u2019 Stanley Cup title-winning coach having led the Blackhawks to three of them, and he joined with LaCombe in saying they\u2019ve been having has been having fun with this playoff opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got their best stretch here late in the year and going into this round here, they\u2019ve been very effective,\u201d Quenneville said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have some things we\u2019ve got to worry about, but I think we\u2019re exiting our last series on a high note knowing that we\u2019d probably played our best game of the series and maybe the season, which is positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a (Ducks) team that we thought, hey, if we get in the playoffs, we\u2019d be excited about seeing what we could do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact Diamond Leung at dleung@reviewjournal.com<\/a>. Follow @diamond83<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 The Golden Knights\u2019 second-round opponent in the Ducks could be considered a plucky, young team.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-297159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297159","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=297159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}