Let’s begin today with a correction.
It may have been claimed on in a pre-game October 18th piece that the Ducks rebuild was “in full swing….
To those that follow the Anaheim Ducks — we can probably agree that the rebuild reached the status of “full swing… on March 21, 2022. That being the NHL trade deadline.
On that day, the Ducks said goodbye to such players as Hampus Lindholm, Rickard Rackell, Nicolas Deslauriers, as well as trading away Josh Manson weeks earlier.
Since the Trade Deadline on March 21, 2022, the Anaheim Ducks have put up a record of 1-6-1.
Pretty bad, but they’re on a slump that has lasted much longer than that.
The former Disney owned franchise really started losing on the night of Jan 31 — a 2-1 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings on the final stop of a 3-0-2 road trip through the Upper Northeast.
Since then, the team led by Dallas Eakins as head coach has gone 5-15-4. That would be the worst record in the NHL in that time.
They are indeed no longer the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
For those interested, the Flames have been first place in the league in that same time span. 20-6-3 for 43 points over 29 games.
Concerning for those interested may be the fact that the second place team since January 31 is the Edmonton Oilers. 19-9-3 for 41 points in 31 games. Let’s save that talk for another day.
Tonight the league’s best team since January 31 will faceoff against the worst team since January 31.
One more tough record fact on the Ducks: they have one win in their last thirteen games. 1-9-3. Ouch.
OK, the Anaheim Ducks are bad. Established. Here’s why they could win tonight.
They Could Work Out of It All record-crippling slumps eventually come to an end. No matter how bad a team plays in the NHL, they will find the end to the madness at some point. The Edmonton Oilers of the 2010’s taught us that. 11 game losing streaks, 13 game losing streaks, months with zero wins — eventually the Oilers always managed to find a way out and win a couple games.
Hockey is Chaos Dr. Ian Malcolm, gifted mathematician specializing in Chaos Theory, once used an example to explain humanity’s poor ability to predict outcomes — a rubber ball. Models map out the trajectory of the ball and run a few thousand simulations to estimate how the ball will bounce. While the model provided a level of confidence in the results, reality told them they could only predict the trajectory of three or four bounces.
The bounces may well be in Anaheim’s favour tonight and predicting against that sounds like — well, chaos.
The Flames have only been so-so of late A 5-3-2 record in their last ten doesn’t exactly instil fear on opposing teams. For all of this hamming up how bad the Ducks have been lately, what if I told you the two teams playing eachother tonight were both 1-2-1 in their last four games?
While the Flames have certainly played a higher quality over that time, three straight losses to the Kings, Avalanche and Blues is no sign of ascendancy.
The final possible reason the 28-31-12 Anaheim Ducks may beat the division leading 41-19-9 Calgary Flames?
Getz’ Last Kick at the Proverbial Can You heard that right. Ryan Getzlaf announced yesterday afternoon that he would be retiring at the end of the 21-22 season. Seventeen years of beating down on the Calgary Flames every time they played.
61 points in 60 games against the Flames in his career.
One particular nightmare that recurs in this writer’s mind is the night of November 24, 2015. Getzlaf assisted on all five Ducks goals. He put the offence on his back and rallied the team from 3-2 Flames to 5-3 Ducks. It was a slaughter.
Make no mistake — tonight could easily feature a swan song to the likes we haven’t seen since late November seven seasons ago.
Morning skate lines courtesy of Hailey Salvian of the Athletic. @hailey_salvian
Gaudreau - Lindholm - Tkachuk Mangiapane - Backlund - Toffoli Dube - Ruzicka - Coleman Lucic - Carpenter - Lewis
Hanifin - Andersson Stone - Tanev Zadorov - Gudbranson
Markstrom
Chasing Hurricanes Concluding the first two months of the season the Calgary Flames held the best statistic for goals against per game. A sparkling 1.95 over 22 games. Since then, the Flames have been an ultimately less fearsome 2.74. 8th in the NHL.
Combine the two and the Flames (2.49) are in in second place behind the Carolina Hurricanes (2.37) and have held that position for over three months.
Only time will tell if the Flames can return to early season defensive form and catch up, but it would be nice to see. The two have been drawing closer since the beginning of March. Carolina going 2.44GA/GP and Calgary going 2.67.
Puck drop at 8:06pm MST.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld