Yuletide cheer and the aroma of firs will turn into acrimony and the scent of desperation on Saturday night when the Kings and Ducks throw down in downtown Los Angeles.
This season’s first Freeway Faceoff delivered as the Ducks capped off their Nov. 28 comeback victory in a shootout. Now, both teams are looking to right their respective ships in a rivalry that has real meaning for the first time this decade.
The Ducks have collected a lean seven of their past 16 possible points, their second-worst stretch of eight games this season after a mid-November run in which they picked up just six of 16. They sit fourth in the NHL in scoring for the season, but are tied for 24th since Dec. 11.
While one veteran acquisition, Mikael Granlund, heated up with four goals and six points in his past four appearances, another cooled down. Chris Kreider, who had nine goals in his first nine games as a Duck, has not found the back of the net in 10 outings and notched a lone point in his past eight games.
Nevertheless, the Ducks remain in a points tie with the Vegas Golden Knights atop the Pacific Division.
Meanwhile, the Kings are already sinking as they approach a point in the season that has flummoxed them for the past two campaigns. Last year, they went 2-7-1 from Jan. 11 through Jan. 30. In 2023-24, a torturous stretch with four wins in 17 games beginning on Dec. 28 cost Todd McLellan his job in a year that derailed the Kings’ build.
This time around, the Kings got an early jump on their slump, which has left them clinging precariously to a playoff spot in a top-heavy Western Conference. The Kings would be three points back of the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with their point total, which has them on track for 89 points after a 105-point effort last season.
“I’m not happy, but eventually – inside of me, I really believe in this group,” Kings winger Kevin Fiala said heading into the holiday break. “I really believe in this group, with great players. We just have to figure it out.”
Yet those types of bromides can hardly soothe the indigestion fans have suffered watching the Kings play, particularly at home, where they were dominant from a win-loss standpoint last season.
Since the NHL began tabulating power-play percentage in 1977, the Kings have their second-worst conversion rate in team history at 13.5% and their worst clip at home ever. Their 2.50 goals per game overall place in the bottom 10 among every season in franchise lore, which dates to 1967, and that mark is only falling.
That’s thanks in part to a pathetic output of two goals per game at home, the lowest ever for an organization that has endured some meager years across seven decades. Their bottom line has reflected their offensive futility.
After losing consecutively to the struggling Columbus Blue Jackets without their all-world defenseman Zach Werenski and the streaky Seattle Kraken sans four of their top players, the Kings are 1-4-1 at home in December, with Saturday’s game representing their final opportunity of the month.
While Fiala and Adrian Kempe have essentially delivered, seemingly every other player on the team has underperformed relative to reasonable expectation and past performance.
The Kings’ void in the middle extends beyond the departure via trade of Phillip Danault last week. Among their five centers – Danault, captain Anže Kopitar, cornerstone Quinton Byfield, top-five pick Alex Turcotte and the towering Samuel Helenius – the Kings have gotten all of six five-on-five goals in 36 games. There are 142 NHL players who have scored the same total or greater individually as those five players have tallied combined.
Even adding in all other situations, their cumulative mark reaches only a dozen goals, a minimum total achieved by 71 individual skaters this season. On defense, the situation is roughly as dire, as seven blue-liners have combined for 11 goals, nearly half of which have come from Brandt Clarke.
“It’s us who has to do something about it, who can pull us out of it, nobody else,” Fiala said.
Ducks at Kings
When: 6 p.m. Saturday
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV: FDSN West, KTTV (Ch. 11), Victory+