Anaheim Ducks Clinch Playoffs for First Time in Eight Years
· Yahoo Sports
The Anaheim Ducks will end the NHL’s third-longest playoff drought, as the San Jose Sharks defeated the Nashville Predators on Monday, sending the Ducks to the playoffs for the first time in eight years.
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From ownership to the front office to the roster, the Ducks set this as a goal for themselves in the spring of 2025, following a 2024-25 season that saw them take a 21-point jump out of the league’s basement in the NHL standings.
Some significant changes occurred ahead of the 2025-26 season. The Ducks parted ways with Greg Cronin and most of his coaching staff and moved on from core roster pieces Trevor Zegras and John Gibson.
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In the Summer of 2025, general manager Pat Verbeek hired Joel Quenneville, and with him, he brought Jay Woodcroft, Ryan McGill, and Andrew Brewer. To the roster, Mikael Granlund, Chris Kreider, and Ryan Poehling were added.
The 2025-26 season had its high highs and low lows, highlighted by two seven-game winning streaks and lowlighted by a nine-game winless streak and a recent six-game winless streak.
Young players like Leo Carlsson, Beckett Sennecke, and Cutter Gauthier have taken significant steps in their development, while veterans like Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba have been seemingly rejuvenated from their first full seasons in Southern California.
However, some younger players like Mason McTavish and Olen Zellweger have seen their development stalled or have taken a step back. Veterans Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano had fallen victim to their fair share of healthy scratches, unexpected from top contributors over the previous three seasons in Anaheim.
At the trade deadline, the Ducks moved on from Strome and, in a separate deal, added veteran right-shot defenseman John Carlson.
The journey’s been extensive and arduous, but for the first time since the 2017-18 season, there will be NHL hockey games beyond the 82 in the regular season in Orange County.
The Ducks’ last playoff game was on April 18, 2018, a 2-1 loss in a four-game sweep at the hands of the San Jose Sharks. The only remaining member in the organization from that series is Troy Terry, who played his first two career NHL games down the stretch of the 2017-18 regular season, but wasn’t in any of the four playoff lineups for the Ducks.
“Just the maturity of the team,” Terry said on what he took away from that experience, being around the team during a playoff series. “This year is a team that’s hopefully starting a run of consistently being in the playoffs, and that team was at the end of however long it had been.
“So you could just tell they’d been there, done that. They just seemed…’unflappable’ is a good word. Put that in there that I said that word. You could tell the maturity level; nothing seemed to really faze them. They had their objective, and I think that’s what this group is working on and needs to continue to get better: belief in what we do best in here, and no matter what happens, not stray from that.”
In the four years prior to 2017-18, the Ducks experienced unprecedented success for the organization, qualifying for the NHL playoffs in four consecutive seasons, winning four Pacific Division titles, and appearing in two Western Conference Finals.
The Ducks’ leading scorers in 2017-18 included Rickard Rakell, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, and Jakob Silfverberg. Their TOI leaders were Cam Fowler and Hampus Lindholm.
As the Anaheim Ducks hope to enter into a new era of consistent contention, a new core is in place, with a new cohort of veterans filling complementary roles. Hungry vets will lean on prior experience, while the younger players will gain ever-valuable playoff reps.
“I’ve never been to the playoffs, but I truly believe that the experience from the past is going to have a big impact,” Ducks goaltender Lukas Dostal said on what he expects from his first NHL playoff experience. “The national level, even in Finland, I’ve played in the playoffs there.
“Those are high paced games, you really cannot make any mistakes. It’s a different type of hockey, both teams are trying to play a defensive game.”
The Ducks will wrap up their regular season with a pair of games on the road to face the Minnesota Wild and Nashville Predators on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, with seeding on the line.
The NHL playoffs will begin on Saturday, April 18. However, with the Ducks schedule to close out the season, it can be expected that their series will start either Sunday or Monday.
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