{"id":73930,"date":"2025-11-29T02:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73930\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T02:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:51:11","slug":"the-ducks-kings-rivalry-has-meaning-in-the-standings-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73930\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ducks-Kings rivalry has meaning in the standings again"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM \u2014 Hockey in Southern California, and particularly the Kings-Ducks rivalry, is much, much better when both teams are good.<\/p>\n

And a small sample size worth of proof came Friday afternoon at Honda Center, the third straight year in which the Freeway Faceoff\u2122 became the Black Friday Special.<\/p>\n

It has turned into a fun post-Thanksgiving tradition. I mean, when the options are fighting the multitudes looking for parking places at the mall, sitting at your computer doing your Christmas shopping via Amazon, or watching hockey \u2013 specifically a bitter neighborhood rivalry \u2013 I think that should be an easy choice. And when first place in the division is already on the line? Even better.<\/p>\n

(Although I must warn you this advice comes from someone who refuses to discuss Christmas until the World Series is over, so consider the source.)<\/p>\n

This time, the announced crowd of 17,174 \u2013 the usual sellout figure and this time pretty close to legitimate, with most of those seats filled by live, screaming humans \u2013 got bonus hockey and, in the case of those rooting for the home team, the ending they wanted. The Ducks rallied from a 4-2 third period deficit in the final 10 minutes of regulation and wound up winning 5-4 in the shootout<\/a>, which solidified their hold on first place in the Pacific Division \u2013 by two points over the Kings and three ahead of Seattle and Vegas \u2013 for at least another day.<\/p>\n

If you are a Ducks fan, knowing that your favorites haven\u2019t been a playoff team since 2018 or a division champ since 2017 \u2026 yeah, it\u2019s early and it\u2019s just a two-point cushion, but there is at last hope after an agonizingly long rebuild.<\/p>\n

Trust me, the guys on the other bench notice. Kings defenseman Brian Dumoulin was a Duck for much of last season before being traded to New Jersey at the deadline. He saw the promise and he saw the growing pains of a young team trying to figure out how to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see the style of play and obviously some of the freedom that especially the young guys with a lot of skill have,\u201d said Dumoulin, who assisted on two of the Kings\u2019 four goals on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, they\u2019re tremendous players. I saw a lot of them last year, obviously. They can make plays and it doesn\u2019t take a lot of time or space for them to make plays and find each other. And they have a lot of confidence right now, obviously, and they\u2019re winning games so that creates it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The passion of the rivalry has always been there, but maybe it has ramped up even more this year. Fun fact: When Ducks fans are chanting \u201cLet\u2019s go Ducks\u201d at the same time Kings fans are chanting \u201cGo Kings go,\u201d it combines to sound suspiciously like \u201cRef you (inhale).\u201d Or something similar. Use your imagination.<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s more at stake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, obviously we weren\u2019t in a playoff spot, but we were coming and I could see kind of the passion of both fan bases and what it meant to them,\u201d Dumoulin said of his experience with this rivalry from the Ducks\u2019 end.<\/p>\n

And while it didn\u2019t diminish the rigors of a tough season, he said, \u201cif you beat the Kings, it was a good season for them at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the Ducks who are a tougher out than before. Just 10 points separated the eight teams in the Pacific Division following Friday\u2019s play. As Kings radio color analyst Daryl Evans noted before the game, it\u2019s no longer Vegas and Edmonton at the top of the division and everybody else trailing. Vegas is three points behind the Ducks and in fourth place. The Oilers, Stanley Cup finalists the past two seasons, are six points back and in sixth place.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody feels like they have a good team and they have a chance to win,\u201d Kings coach Jim Hiller said. \u201cHistorically there might have been some teams that were a little bit weaker and when you get a lead you could kind of hold it probably a little bit easier. This year every team\u2019s got some pretty dangerous players. And so they feel like \u2018Hey, we\u2019re still in this,\u2019 and you get a good push from the other team.\u201d<\/p>\n

That essentially was what happened here Friday. The Ducks were down, 4-2, after Joel Edmundson\u2019s goal 6:53 into the third period, but Pavel Mintyukov beat Darcy Kuemper top shelf from right between the faceoff circles at 10:42 to make it 4-3, and after the hosts pulled the goalie with a little over two minutes left Leo Carlsson tied it with his 13th goal off a feed from defenseman Jackson LaCombe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think on the bench we never feel like we\u2019re out of a game,\u201d Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like we get more angry when we get down by one or two.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I think we can stipulate that Quenneville\u2019s hiring in May<\/a> was the catalyst that helped move the Ducks forward. It was after that introductory press conference that both General Manager Pat Verbeek and owner Henry Samueli made it clear that getting back to the playoffs was the objective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not in that locker room, so I don\u2019t really know like kind of what he\u2019s implemented,\u201d Dumoulin said. \u201cBut I know obviously their younger guys have taken steps forward and have been really good this season. Obviously he\u2019s kind of given that freedom and let them play, but also harnessed them. \u2026 Cro (former coach Greg Cronin) did a good job of teaching them the defensive side of the puck and how hard you have to play night in, night out to win in this league. And you can see they have a lot more offensive freedom and they\u2019re trying to take advantage of it, especially off the rush.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be ups and downs, assuredly. But those nine banners in the east rafters of Honda Center \u2013 denoting six division championships (the last in 2017), two conference titles and the 2007 Stanley Cup \u2013 very well could get some company, maybe sooner than we think.<\/p>\n

And if the Ducks raise their game and the Kings raise theirs in response the hockey fans of SoCal are the ultimate winners, no matter which jersey they wear.<\/p>\n

jalexander@scng.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM \u2014 Hockey in Southern California, and particularly the Kings-Ducks rivalry, is much, much better when both teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,43198,1706,404,127],"class_list":["post-73930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-jim-alexander","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73930","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=73930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}