ANAHEIM — When the Colorado Avalanche, the NHL’s best team, came into Honda Center and thumped the Ducks 5-1 on Tuesday night, it could have been considered another bit of education in what it takes to compete on an elite level.
The difference? In the recent past, there have been a lot of those painful educational experiences for Anaheim’s young nucleus. Now, not so much.
And the evidence came the very next night, the second of back-to-back games, when the Ducks did to the New York Islanders – no slouches in the Metropolitan Division – what the Avalanche had done to them the night before: A 5-1 victory, with backup goaltender Ville Husso getting the call and stopping 42 shots, and Cutter Gauthier continuing his scoring tear with his 30th and 31st goals of the season.
This suggests that the core of young players the Ducks have been incubating the last couple of seasons is maturing. And it is also a sign that the hiring of Joel Quenneville in May as head coach, controversial in some quarters for things that had nothing to do with hockey, was exactly what the franchise needed.
Remember, this was what owner Henry Samueli said the day that Quenneville was introduced as head coach: “It has been a long, painful process, but we felt that we’ve reached a point where the rebuild is coming to an end. It really is. And it’s time to take this step to becoming a perennial playoff contender and eventually Stanley Cup contender.”
In that same conversation, he said he’d told general manager Pat Verbeek: “You do what it takes to make this a really steady perennial playoff contender and Stanley Cup contender down the road. And if it means signing big-name free agents, go for it. … We told him, going forward you will not be constrained by the budget.”
Yeah, things are interesting in Honda Center again after seven non-playoff seasons. And with the NHL trade deadline coming at noon (PST) Friday, who knows what Verbeek might have up his sleeve to fortify his team for the stretch run.
Wednesday night’s victory kept the Ducks within a point of the Pacific Division lead and with a five-point cushion in the race for the playoffs. Anaheim last made the postseason in 2018, and the Ducks’ consistent stretch of hanging banners – the club’s only Stanley Cup to date in 2007 and five straight division championships from 2012-13 to 2016-17 – was receding further in their rear-view mirror.
The reason for excitement in this case is a group of young guys who are maturing and learning how to be consistent winners, prodded by a coach who won three Stanley Cups in Chicago and has demonstrated a knack for turning young teams into contenders.
The Ducks have already developed the knack of perseverance, as exemplified in both their penchant for comebacks in games – eight victories in which they’ve come from behind in the third period, four of those with multi-goal comebacks, and 18 comeback wins overall – and, as noted above, their ability to bounce back from a loss.
Of course, it’s nice to get an early lead occasionally, too. Anaheim fell behind 2-0 in the first period Tuesday night against the Avalanche, got one of the goals back early in the second when Gauthier scored, and then was, um, buried over the game’s final 35 minutes.
Wednesday night, against an Islanders team that itself had won five in a row, the Ducks again conceded the first goal but led 3-1 by the end of the first period, with Gauthier scoring twice – his fourth and fifth in a row of the Ducks goals over the last three games – and Beckett Sennecke adding his 20th, the fourth Duck to reach that mark this season after Gauthier, Chris Kreider and Leo Carlsson, the latter two with 20 apiece.
“I like the way we competed,” Quenneville told reporters Wednesday night. “I thought we had passion to our game. I thought that we had more of a purpose. … There was more of a mentality of not being fancy, let’s play hard, and let’s play simple, and (a) check-first mentality. I think that was kind of the turning point, I think, when we got back in the winning ways there before the (Olympic) break.”
Resilience? After a promising start, the Ducks had lost nine in a row and 13 of 15 from late December into early January, 11 of those 13 losses coming in regulation. They followed that with a seven-game winning streak, four of those wins in extra time, and are 13-3-0 from mid-January to now heading into a Friday home game against Montreal.
Is there a different feeling in the Ducks’ room?
“We’re obviously a really young team,” center Mason MacTavish said Tuesday. “And I think everybody kind of just takes steps to get better each year. I think you’re really seeing that unfold this year, a lot, and hopefully we can keep this going.
“Obviously (Quenneville has) done a great job just making us be confident, not overthink out there. And the young guys taking steps, like Leo (Carlsson), Cutter (Gauthier), have been unreal. So I think it’s mixture of all that. … There’s so much that goes into young guys taking steps. Q just kind of lets them play and and they just trust their instincts out there.”
For the record, MacTavish qualifies as a grizzled veteran, a 23-year-old who was the No. 3 selection in the 2021 draft. Carlsson, 21, was the No. 2 pick in 2023 behind Chicago’s Connor Bedard. Gauthier, 22, was the No. 5 pick in the draft by Philadelphia in 2022 (and will be booed forevermore in the City of Brotherly Love after making it clear he didn’t want to play in Philly and effectively forcing a trade to the Ducks). And Sennecke, 20, was the No. 3 selection in the 2024 draft by Anaheim.
With some franchises in this intensely competitive market, stockpiling high picks and doing a rebuild is frowned upon if not out-and-out rejected by fans. I’m sure Ducks fans weren’t terribly enamored with their team’s rebuild, but it’s easier to accept when better times are ahead.
And it makes a difference in the dressing room, too.
“We’re super confident in our group, and obviously we didn’t like how we played (Tuesday) night against Colorado,” Gauthier told SCNG’s Andrew Knoll following Wednesday’s game. “And we’re not going to let things like that linger this late in the season. We’re going to go out and do the best we can to get rid of those ugly habits and build opportunity moving forward.”
It’s taken a while for the pieces to fall into place, but maturity has set in. Thus, the Ducks fan base now has a lot to look forward to.
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