ANAHEIM — Hockey in Southern California, and particularly the Kings-Ducks rivalry, is much, much better when both teams are good.
And a small sample size worth of proof came Friday afternoon at Honda Center, the third straight year in which the Freeway Faceoff
became the Black Friday Special.
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 – specifically a bitter neighborhood rivalry – I think that should be an easy choice. And when first place in the division is already on the line? Even better.
(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.)
This time, the announced crowd of 17,174 – the usual sellout figure and this time pretty close to legitimate, with most of those seats filled by live, screaming humans – 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, which solidified their hold on first place in the Pacific Division – by two points over the Kings and three ahead of Seattle and Vegas – for at least another day.
If you are a Ducks fan, knowing that your favorites haven’t been a playoff team since 2018 or a division champ since 2017 … yeah, it’s early and it’s just a two-point cushion, but there is at last hope after an agonizingly long rebuild.
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.
“You can see the style of play and obviously some of the freedom that especially the young guys with a lot of skill have,” said Dumoulin, who assisted on two of the Kings’ four goals on Friday.
“I mean, they’re tremendous players. I saw a lot of them last year, obviously. They can make plays and it doesn’t 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’re winning games so that creates it.”
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 “Let’s go Ducks” at the same time Kings fans are chanting “Go Kings go,” it combines to sound suspiciously like “Ref you (inhale).” Or something similar. Use your imagination.
Now there’s more at stake.
“I mean, obviously we weren’t 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,” Dumoulin said of his experience with this rivalry from the Ducks’ end.
And while it didn’t diminish the rigors of a tough season, he said, “if you beat the Kings, it was a good season for them at that point.”
But it’s not just the Ducks who are a tougher out than before. Just 10 points separated the eight teams in the Pacific Division following Friday’s play. As Kings radio color analyst Daryl Evans noted before the game, it’s 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.
“Everybody feels like they have a good team and they have a chance to win,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “Historically 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’s got some pretty dangerous players. And so they feel like ‘Hey, we’re still in this,’ and you get a good push from the other team.”
That essentially was what happened here Friday. The Ducks were down, 4-2, after Joel Edmundson’s 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.
“I think on the bench we never feel like we’re out of a game,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. “It’s almost like we get more angry when we get down by one or two.”
And I think we can stipulate that Quenneville’s hiring in May 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.
“I’m not in that locker room, so I don’t really know like kind of what he’s implemented,” Dumoulin said. “But I know obviously their younger guys have taken steps forward and have been really good this season. Obviously he’s kind of given that freedom and let them play, but also harnessed them. … 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’re trying to take advantage of it, especially off the rush.”
There will be ups and downs, assuredly. But those nine banners in the east rafters of Honda Center – denoting six division championships (the last in 2017), two conference titles and the 2007 Stanley Cup – very well could get some company, maybe sooner than we think.
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.
jalexander@scng.com