The Kings looked nothing like a playoff team heading into the NHL’s trade deadline. They had lost six of their last eight games, had just fired their coach and had saw their second-leading scorer go down with a broken leg in the Olympic tournament.
They were backing away from the playoffs, not heading toward them. So general manager Ken Holland did the prudent thing and largely stood pat, trading a couple of veterans for draft picks and making only a pair of minor acquisitions.
Turns out he wasn’t waving a white flag but rather a green one because the Kings hit the gas after that, gathering points in 16 of their final 20 games, finishing the regular season as one of the hottest teams in the NHL. That earned them a fifth straight trip to the playoffs and a first-round meeting with the Colorado Avalanche, the league’s winningest team, beginning Sunday in Denver.
The Ducks, meanwhile, advanced to the postseason for the first time since 2018 but they stumbled in, losing eight of their last 10 and blowing a five-point lead in the Pacific Division and the home-ice advantage that went with it over the final three weeks. The Ducks, the third-place team in the Pacific Division, will start on the road in Edmonton on Monday.
“It’s been a climb. Probably didn’t look very good a while ago,” said Kings interim coach D.J. Smith, who could lose the interim part of that title after going 11-6-6 after replacing Jim Hiller behind the bench with 23 games to play. “It’s a credit to the guys, the leadership. They played playoff hockey for a while now. And it’s allowed us this opportunity.”
Actually, crediting the Kings with playing playoff hockey isn’t necessarily a compliment since the team hasn’t won a postseason series since hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2014. But it’s been more than a decade since the Kings have entered the playoffs carrying this kind of momentum and they have a few people to thank for that.
Journeyman goaltender Anton Forsberg, who spent most of his first season in Los Angeles backing up Darcy Kuemper, won five straight starts in April to key the Kings’ fast finish. Russian winger Artemi Panarin, acquired from the New York Rangers just before the Olympic break and a month before the trade deadline, contributed nine goals and 18 assists in 26 games, helping make up for the loss of forwards Kevin Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko to injuries. And Quinton Byfield scored 10 times in his final 13 games to set a career high with 24 goals.
“Since the break I feel like we’ve really come together as a group,” Byfield said.
The team displayed uncommon grit as well, going to overtime an NHL-record 33 times. (They lost 20 of those games; if they have gotten the second point in just a third of those, they would have won the division.)
And finally, the Kings were also fueled by a desire to give captain Anze Kopitar one more chance at a title. Kopitar, who announced in September that this season would be his last, gave an emotional good-bye speech to the fans after the final regular-season home game. His teammates were determined to give him an encore in the playoffs.
“That had a lot to do with it,” Smith said. “Guys were playing for him. He gets one more chance to play at home.
“We found a way.”
Kopitar, however, credited his coach for the team’s fast finish.
“Once Smithy came in, he just changed the energy a little bit and we’re trying to be a little more aggressive versus sitting back,” said Kopitar, the Kings’ all-time leader in games, points and assists.
For the Ducks, they’re not only returning to the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons — only the Detroit Red Wings have a longer active postseason drought — but they also posted a winning record for the first time since 2018.
Troy Terry, who played two games as a rookie that season, is the only Duck remaining from that team.
“This year has just felt different from the start,” he said. “It was less question marks about the potential of the team. We knew what we could be.”
Which isn’t to say it’s been easy. The team had two seven-game winning streaks but also weathered losing streaks of nine and six games.
“We had a couple of roller coasters there, starting and then slowing down and getting back on it,” said coach Joel Quenneville, who has taken five teams to the NHL playoffs, winning three Stanley Cups in Chicago.
The Ducks’ 273 goals this season are the most in franchise history but the 288 they allowed is third-worst all time, leaving the team with the second-highest goal differential of any playoff team. (Only the Kings are worse at -22.)
Speaking of history, winger Cutter Gauthier, with 18 goals in the final 23 games, is the first Duck to score 40 goals in a season since Corey Perry in 2013-14. At 22, he’s also the second-youngest to get there, trailing only Paul Kariya.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
